The Rayner Dairy Research and Teaching Facility held its official opening at the U of S campus on October 15, 2013 in Saskatoon. One week away from 90 years old Betty Lang, daughter of the facility’s namesake was photographed with some of the bovines in the facility. Photograph by: Richard Marjan
If you ever get an urge to smell the distinct odour of a working farm, you can satisfy it at a newly opened dairy barn in Saskatoon.
Tuesday marked the grand opening of the Rayner Dairy Research and Teaching Facility at the University of Saskatchewan. Public and private investments combined to fund the $11.5 million facility, which will allow new kinds of agriculture research to take place on campus.
“It’s a state-of-the-art facility involving robotics and the latest in cow handling technology,” said Minister of Agriculture Lyle Stewart.
“It’s a very humane space for the cattle, and we expect great research to come out of this, both in feed and handling of cattle.”
The new facility will enable innovative research on dairy products, cattle care, nutrition, reproduction and feed.
“It’s going to be absolutely amazing,” said Janna Moats, a graduate student studying dairy nutrition. Her research focuses on incorporating omega-3 fatty acids into cows’ milk through their diet. The research could lead to omega-3 enriched milk products like cheese and butter.
“We have so much more technology, and we have a brand new metabolism barn. It’s sixteen tie stalls, so we can individually feed the animals and treat the animals on an individual basis,” she said.
The cows are given their own stalls so researchers can easily track outcomes based on diet and digestion.
The facility also studies milk production. Some of the cows are milked by hand three times a day, while others are milked by a robotic milker when they feel ready to be milked. A collar on the cows keep track of the frequency of milking, sending the cow back into the pen if they were milked too recently. All milk production is tracked automatically, opening up many possibilities for future research.
Similar automatic tracking is also used for diet studies on the cows.
The barn is also equipped with self-activated grooming brushes for the cows to use at their own leisure. The brushes are part of research into the ways cows deal with stress.
The facility is named after John G. Rayner, a former university administrator who was dedicated to agriculture in Saskatchewan. His daughter, Betty Lang, just shy of her 90th birthday, was on hand with her two sons for the ribbon cutting.
The facility also includes a Feeding the World interpretative gallery, which provides interactive exhibits for the public to learn about how the dairy farm facility operates and how Saskatchewan agriculture contributes to the world food market. Visitors can also walk along the “cow walk” and get a bird’s-eye view of the cows. The gallery is open from noon to 4:30 p.m. daily for self-guided tours.
Source: The Star Phoenix
