Today was a very informative day!! We only visited two stops but it was way too much information I though was possible. We started our day at the Purina Mills Research Farm today, this was an awesome tour! We got to load a bus and drive to 4 of 5 of their stops: equine, beef, dairy, and companion/exotic animals. They have a program going on with deer at the facility where they basically feed them the best stuff to improve antler growth which was pretty incredible.
They did have a swine unit but we were unable to see it because of the breakout of the PED disease. They have some really cool innovative ideas coming into effect.
The second stop we went to was the University of Missouri. Their campus farm was PHENOMENAL. They had over 1,800 acres that did not even include their dairy facility. We got to their Animal Science Research Center and then we proceeded to their swine unit where we got to see GLOW IN THE DARK PIGS-this is a study where they are testing retina depreciation in the sow that has the fluorescent gene in her, it was an awesome experience to be able to do that. They also had a really cool feed program at their beef center called Grow Safe and it basically calculated every time a registered calf came in to feed and how much it ate and went back into the database to give the researchers a tremendous amount of information .This is definitely something I would like to see happening at OSU in the near future.
