University of Guelph

On Wednesday, December 5th, the Norwell LEAF program had the privilege to visit the University of Guelph Research barns. We first visited the chicken and horse barn where Dave Vandenburg gave a tour. It then followed up with lunch at the university and a powerpoint presentation of all the different agricultural programs that the University of Guelph and Ridgetown offered. Soon after, our last stop was a tour around the dairy research barns.

The Arkell Research (poultry barn) is a facility that supports the universities research projects. This is done by replicating different systems used throughout the industry. They have about 12,000 poultry. On this tour we first visited the hatchery, which has two 14,000 sized chicken egg incubators. This machine has slight movements to keep the eggs in motion as if it were still with the hen. This helps with keeping the yolk moving and not resting at the bottom of the egg. The eggs will then move to one of the two 5,000 egg hatchers. Next we moved to see the broilers and layers where we saw many different systems that are used (cage system, pullet rearing aviary, adult egg layer aviary etc.) and being able to see the pros and cons of each system. After walking through the poultry barns we then visited the equine sector. The university had about 30 horses and were researching about colic. Soon after, our class went to the University where we were kindly given pizza for lunch and listened to a presentation about courses given related to agriculture either through the University of Guelph or Ridgetown. This was beneficial for all students as we seen what we could get involved in after schooling, seeing many different job opportunities, and being able to talk to people that are very familiar with the schooling process.

Finally, we had the opportunity to visit the new dairy research barn that was built in 2015. This barn was a $25 million project, and is currently milking over 200 cows. For research purposes this barn has many different milking systems like one robot, rotary parlor, and tie stall, where cows are being switched throughout each system bi-weekly. Each cow has a different colour band on their leg to show which research project they are currently in. In the calf barn, there is currently a research trial in the process about the pain and discomfort calves experience throughout the dehorning process, and different medications that benefits the calves more.

All in all, this tour was a very unique experience for all of the students in the LEAF program. We can all benefit from this tour by first of all seeing all different systems used in each industry in just one day. It was a great way to be able to see how each system works and the pros and cons, not only from the farmers perspective but also in a research perspective. As well, this tour has shown us students about future job opportunities not only at the University, but also post-education from the presentation. Each person we met on the trip were very informational and were willing/able to answer all of our questions. We would like to give a special thanks to everyone involved for making this trip possible from sponsors, to bus drivers, teachers that joined, and especially anyone involved at the University of Guelph. It was a great experience and we are very thankful that you took time out of your day to educate us students on the research process in the poultry, equine, and dairy sectors.