MSU dedicated its new dairy center on Oct. 8. Coverage reports a herd of nearly 700 cows, while the university has not independently confirmed the count or the project's final cost.
Students will train on a working dairy farm at 3965 College Road in East Lansing. Michigan State University's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources dedicated its Dairy Cattle Teaching and Research Center there on Thursday, Oct. 8. The center sits on the south side of MSU's campus and is intended to connect practical farm instruction with work serving Michigan's dairy industry.
The opening was reported by WLNS and WILX. MSU says the center will support student education. It will also host scientific research, with outreach aimed at the state's dairy sector.
For Farmington Voice readers, this is an East Lansing university project, not a City of Farmington or Farmington Public Schools project. Its opening does not change local municipal services or school programs.
Coverage puts the project cost at $75 million and the herd at nearly 700 cows, about three times the previous campus milking herd. The reports confirm the dedication and the center's teaching and research mission. They do not independently verify the final cost or provide new confirmation of the herd count.
The account also describes a visitor center and meeting spaces. It reports an anaerobic digester at the facility. Water reclamation is another listed system. The reported infrastructure includes sand-bedding recycling and electric-vehicle charging, but the available opening coverage does not independently verify the facility's engineering inventory.
Barry Bradford, chair of dairy management in MSU's Department of Animal Science, has described the center as a place to study dairy operations as an integrated system. The account says the facility has technology to measure farm inputs and outputs. Available coverage does not identify specific research projects or findings from the new center.
Professor Adam Lock told WILX that about 50 undergraduate students work at the farm. Graduate students are there as well, preparing for careers such as veterinary medicine and dairy nutrition. The center is designed to give students experience on an operating dairy while supporting research tied to Michigan's dairy industry.
Lock described dairy as Michigan agriculture's largest sector by production. He also said agriculture is the state's second-largest source of income. MSU intends the center's outreach work to connect its teaching and research with the wider dairy industry.
Michigan State's center is separate from the University of Michigan's planned $26 million modernization of its Walter E. Lay Automotive Engineering Laboratory. The project would expand electric-vehicle and battery research, as detailed in an earlier report.
Bradford's earlier account cited rising enrollment in dairy programs, including an increase in out-of-state students that fall. Many, the account said, came from commercial dairy farms. MSU has not provided enrollment totals, so the reported increase cannot be quantified from the available information.
