Our Facility

The Poultry Research Center currently houses considerable research capability for supporting both basic and applied research.

 

Poultry research has focused on energetic, nutrition, environmental distress and growth modeling research. The large scale environmental chamber may be used to generate specific cycling ambient temperature-relative humidity environments for applied-basic experiments.

 

Our poultry research and equipment will move into the new Animal Nutrition and Physiology Center once it is completed.

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Overall, the center contains 172 floor pens (132 in remodeled buildings) that may be used for applied broiler, layer, turkey and breeder studies. Additional facilities include a poultry processing laboratory; computer laboratory; sample handling-laboratory; two large scale environmental chambers (1,680-bird capacity) and 84 calorimetry-environmental chambers.

 

The 84 open-circuit respiratory units equipped for real-time physiological monitoring are divided between 3 chamber rooms for poultry and a new complex for swine.

 

The units are used in basic thermobalance studies for the determination of bird heat production, evaporative cooling, nonevaporative cooling, respiration rate, apparent respiration efficiency, body temperature, bird heat content, protein and fat deposition pattern, electrocardiogram, blood pressure, and numerous metabolic variables determined in blood samples obtained via indwelling catheters.

 

Body temperature, heart rate, electrocardiogram, and blood pressure observations are made using a radio telemetry system with data recording every 1.5 minutes for all birds. This is a one-of-its-kind facility. Similarly, 24 environmental chambers have recently been added to accommodate pigs, up to 40 kg.