Public outreach | Sask. dairy farmers contribute $4.2 million to project
Construction is nearly complete on an $11.5 million dairy research facility at the University of Saskatchewan.
Bernard Laarveld, a professor and dairy researcher at the university’s animal and poultry science department, said work on the Rayner Dairy Research and Teaching Facility is 97 percent complete.
Crews will install fire systems in the coming weeks and put finishing touches on an overhead walkway that will allow visitors to get a bird’s-eye view of the facility’s operations, he said.
Installation of milking equipment and animal handling equipment is roughly two weeks away, he added.
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Cows will be moved into the new facility when that work is complete, possibly before June 1.
“We’re getting very, very close,” Laarveld said last week.
“We are contemplating moving into the facility, tentatively … by very late May.”
The new facility was designed to accommodate advanced dairy research in animal welfare, herd nutrition, feed development, animal genetics and reproduction technologies, mastitis and the adoption of new barn technologies and novel dairy management techniques.
The university’s existing dairy barn, built in 1972, no longer reflects current dairy industry standards in terms of equipment, technology and animal care features.
As a result, dairy experts at the U of S were unable to conduct some types of research and address issues affecting modern dairy farmers.
Public outreach and education will also figure prominently in the new facility.
It will include visitor services, viewing galleries and interactive displays to enhance the public’s understanding of modern dairy operations.
Saskatchewan dairy farmers contributed nearly $4.2 million to the project through an in-kind donation of milk quota.
Each of the province’s 166 dairy farmers contributed the equivalent of 0.57 percent of their milk quota to the project. The average donation amounted to roughly $25,500 per farm.
Jack Ford, a dairy farmer from Foam Lake, Sask., said the need for enhanced public outreach and education programs was a major reason why Saskatchewan dairy farmers approved the donation.
“We mandated that if you want us to be part of this, it (the facility) must be built on campus and it must be open for public viewing,” said Ford, a director with SaskMilk.
“It is critical for us as an industry to demonstrate to the urban population where food comes from and what goes into making that food.”
Laarveld said economic conditions in Saskatchewan made it difficult to stay within budget. Bids came back higher than expected when the project went to tender about a year and a half ago.
“We had to go through a secondary redesign process to bring the project within budget … so we did remove a few aspects to contain costs,” he said.
“But we still believe that we have the research capability and the teaching capability that we wanted,.… Overall, it’s a beautiful facility. It’s state of the art.”
The new facility is designed to house 100 lactating cows.
