HAT had the opportunity recently to tour the Purdue University Swine Environmental Research Building in West Lafayette to learn about the work they’re doing to help educate the future pork farmers of Indiana.
“It’s a truly unique facility. It really lets us look at whole barn mass balance,” says Scott Radcliffe, assistant department head in the Department of Animal Sciences at Purdue. “So, we can look at all the nutrients that come into the barn whether that’s in the pigs that come in, or the feed that comes in, or even the incoming air. We can also measure all the nutrients that go out. So, we can quantitatively collect the manure from 24 different manure pits, we can measure the air that goes out of each of the 12 rooms and look at the emissions.”
Radcliffe says the focus of the facility is on the nutrition, physiology, genetics, management, behavior, and welfare of swine.
“I think the overall goal of this facility is to really be able to reduce the environmental footprint of swine production. Doing that in a way that is economically sustainable by the farmer, socially acceptable by the public, and that we maintain or improve upon the welfare and the wellbeing of those animals in that process.”
Radcliffe explains some of the research they’ve conducted to that end.
“We’ve done a lot of research looking at lowering the nitrogen content of the diet by feeding lower protein diets and bringing in synthetic amino acids, and we’ve been able to quantify that impact not just on nitrogen excretion but also nitrogen emissions in the form of ammonia. We’ve also looked at rearing pigs with and without antibiotics. We’ve looked at the ability of what happens if we go completely antibiotic free and what impact that could potentially have on the environmental footprint of the facility. We’re doing a lot of research now looking at different things like heat stress, which we’re seeing more and more of in certain areas of the country, and how we can maybe mitigate that through some nutritional interventions if we know a heat stress is coming on.”
Radcliffe tells HAT that student interest in the Department of Animal Sciences is increasing. 20 years ago, they had around 300 undergraduate students in the program; that number has now grown to around 700 undergraduate students.
Radcliffe adds that this facility is the only swine facility in the country that can conduct environmental research at this scale.
