Morrison Hall
Located at 507 Tower Avenue, with over 300 rooms and 133,000 square feet of floor space, Morrison Hall 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. These are described briefly below.
Cornell University Ruminant Center (CURC)
Consisting of some 2600 acres, Cornell University Ruminant Center is located about 15 miles southeast of campus on Route 38 in the township of Harford. The headquarters building contains offices, a conference room, livestock arena, research laboratory and housing for 8 students.
The Dairy Research Unit, which is part of CURC, 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 milking parlor is a double-16 parallel parlor with a basement for milk sampling. 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.
This research capacity supports Cornell's leading research programs in dairy nutrition and metabolism, reproductive physiology and management, and genomics.
Contact Ricki Sleggs, Office Manager (Dairy 8 LLC at CURC) at 607-844-8803.
Sheep Flock
A flock of two groups of 100 ewes each is used to control vegetation at the Cascadilla Solar Farm about two miles from campus. Each group lambs 3 times in 2 years alternating with the other group so that lambing happens about every 120 days at the on campus Teaching Barn. This allows opportunities for students to gain sheep management experience and provides opportunities for access by researchers to sheep with wide ranges of maturity and reproductive status year-round.
With Grade A milking facilities at the Teaching Barn, about 1/3 of the ewes have dairy (East Friesian and Lacaune) breeding genetics for research and opportunities for a student-run sheep dairy.
Poultry Unit
Poultry research facilities, including individual and group cages, group floor plans, a chick unit, and a feed mixing center are adjacent to campus.
Equine Unit
This facility, located on campus near Morrison Hall, is used for studies requiring close monitoring of the subjects (horses and ponies). Larger numbers of horses, housed in the Cornell Equine Research Park, which is managed by the Veterinary College, are available for teaching and more extensive research programs.
Large Animal Research and Teaching Unit (LARTU)
Located adjacent to Morrison Hall, LARTU provides excellent facilities for small numbers of large animals for intensive metabolic studies involving surgical preparation, isotopes, infusions and other procedures and requiring close monitoring of responses.
On Campus Teaching Barn
This unit provides short-term on-campus facilities for housing and managing dairy cattle and other farm animals used in teaching.
Livestock Pavilion
Across from Morrison Hall, on Judd Falls Road, this large pavilion provides flexible space for animal use in laboratory classes, demonstrations, training sessions, shows and sales.