All in a Day’s WorkPurdue’s Research Farm

Rebecca Osborne

Welcome to Purdue University’s Animal Sciences Re-search and Education Center! I know many students at Purdue have never been to the research farms, and some are unaware that such a place even exists. The research farm is about a 15 minute drive from campus and con-sists of thousands of acres of farm ground. After I gradu-ated high school last year, I began working as an undergraduate research assistant for one of the Animal Science professors. I spend about half of my time working in a lab, and the other half here at the farm helping with the research projects.

Purdue’s swine farm has thousands of pigs, and the majority of them are used in research projects done by the professors. These baby pigs shown here are just a couple days old, and will stay with their mothers for a few weeks before being weaned. A sow (female pig) can have twenty baby pigs at a time! The babies have a high risk of being stepped or laid on by their mothers, so the sows are put into crates that don’t allow them to turn around. This gives the pigs a better chance of surviving their rst few days.pigs a better chance of surviving their rst few days.

Once the baby pigs are a few days old, they go through processing. It’s hard to tell pigs apart since they’re all so similar in appearance, so the most important part in this process is the identication step. Numbers are written on their backs for research purposes, then their ears are ‘notched’ to help identify them when they’re put with other litters of pigs. Then they’re weighed, given shots, have their tails docked, teeth clipped, and are castrated before they are weaned from their mothers.

Pictured above are three hundred pound hogs laying outside in a concrete pen. These hogs are called gilts, because they’re females that have never given birth before. Pigs come into heat every twenty-one days, and they’re articially inseminated with a boar’s (un-castrated male pig) semen. Exactly one hundred and fourteen days later, they’re brought back inside to give birth. Contrary to what many people think, pigs are actually very clean animals. The hogs shown above are completely clean!

Another part of Purdue’s research farm is the sheep unit. Shown above are ewes (female sheep with lambs) eating hay while their lambs run and play behind them. We most often conduct genetics and nutrition research on the sheep here at the farm. The ewes stay outside until they are within a few days of giving birth, then are brought inside the barn. Having twins or triplets is not uncom-mon for sheep, and the lambs have surprisingly high success rates. Watching new lambs being born is one of my favorite ways to Watching new lambs being born is one of my favorite ways to spend my afternoons in the sheep unit.

One of the larger parts of Purdue’s farm is the dairy unit. Here, nearly two hundred cows are milked twice a day, every day of the year. This is a heifer, which means she’s a female who has never given birth to a calf. Once she has given birth, then she’s called a cow. Cows can produce milk only after they’ve given birth. This black and white cow here is called a Holstein, and this breed produces the majority of the milk in the United States. While they’re majority of the milk in the United States. While they’re not being milked in the barn, they spend their days graz-ing on grass outside in the elds.

The majority of the research conducted at the dairy unit consists of milk production studies and nutrition research. We want to raise the healthiest cows possible, so their diets are often studied to grow the best cow possible. And since we drink the milk that comes out of them, it’s important that we’re careful what we feed and inject them with. Our labs study the effects on things such as antibiotics in the milk these cows produce. In the barns pictured here, the milk these cows produce. In the barns pictured here, the cows are brought in daily to be milked and studied.

The animal science research farms play an important role in the education of Purdue’s agriculture students. Working as an undergraduate research assistant has taught me more than any time spent in the classroom has. The opportunities that can come from spending time here are endless, and many of my closest relationships have come from working here at the farm. From sun up to sun down, the research farm always has a job to do, animal to study, and person to meet.a job to do, animal to study, and person to meet.