Cornell University Ruminant Center. This center, consisting of some 2600 acres, with dairy, beef, and sheep unit, is located about 15 miles southeast of campus on Route 38 in the township of Harford (Address: Cornell Lane, Harford, NY 13053). The headquarters building is associated with the dairy unit and contains offices, a conference room, livestock arena, research laboratory and housing for 8 students.

Dairy Unit Built in 2013, the Cornell University Dairy Research Center houses about 600 dairy cows (milking and dry) plus an additional 500 head of youngstock. A freestall barn with 486 stalls has capability to house cows in both large and small groups for the conduct of replicated pen studies. A smaller freestall barn is designed specifically for dry cows and cows needing additional attention for health needs. A tiestall/metabolism barn has 80 individual tiestalls for more intensive data collection including individual feed intakes plus an additional 12 metabolism stalls for conduct of digestion and physiology studies.

The dairy has state of the art cow comfort, including sand-bedded stalls, ample ventilation through curtained sidewalls, and evaporative cooling with sprinklers and fans for relief during summertime heat. The milking facilities are equipped with a double 16 vertical lift parallel from DeLaval with MM27 individual milk meters manufactured by SCR Engineers. This herd, which usually has about 500 milking cows and averages ~28,000 lb of milk, is heavily used in research, teaching, and extension in dairy cattle management, nutrition, and reproductive physiology.

Dairy replacement heifers are housed in a 6-row freestall barn with ~150 stalls and self-locking headgates in the feeding lane to facilitate heifer handling. A surgery room is available with an individual cow chute and headlock gate to perform detailed surgical (catheterization, rumen fistulation, liver biopsies) and reproductive procedures (uterine and corpus luteum biopsy sampling, follicular ablation, Doppler ultrasonography, embryo flushing and transfer).

Commercial dairy farms for large field studies. The Dairy Cattle Biology and Management Laboratory has a long standing relationship with numerous large commercial dairy operations in the state of NY. These operations range in size from 500 to 4,000 head of dairy cattle. Some of these farms are located within a 20 to 40 mile range of Cornell University while others are located within 90 to 100 miles from Cornell University. Our laboratory is currently performing studies in collaboration with numerous farms which continue to provide support and use of their animals for our research program.

Frank Morrison Hall: With over 300 rooms and 133,000 square feet of floor space, is the campus home of the Department of Animal Science. In addition to offices and classrooms, the building contains some 25 research laboratories. The department has many other facilities, both on and off campus, which are used in fulfilling its teaching, research and extension missions.