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Facilities

The School of Animal Sciences is located in Litton-Reaves Hall. Most of the administrative offices, Student Resource Center, and Office of Undergraduate Education are located on the third floor. Faculty and program offices, laboratories, conference rooms, and classrooms are located on the second and third floors. In addition, the school maintains Biosafety Level 2 animal research facilities in Litton-Reaves Hall.

SAS maintains a 200-ewe sheep flock, a 150-cow beef herd, a  290-dairy herd, 40-sow swine herd, a five-building turkey center with facilities for >2,000 young and 1,500 adult chickens, and a herd of 75 to 120 horses for teaching and research activities on-campus.  In addition, Kentland Farm, located 10 miles from campus provides resources for grazing and animal research.

Facilities providing support for the more intensive elements of the school's teaching, research and extention programs can be found below.

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    Alphin Stuart Arena (LARNA)
    Alphin Stuart Arena (LARNA)

    The Alphin-Stuart Livestock Teaching Arena includes a 125-by-250-foot ring with a prescription earthen floor, classroom space, office space, bleacher seating for 450, animal holding pens, and a kitchen/concession area.

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    Beef Cattle Center barn in the distance with a silo to the left. Green pasture and trees in the foreground with moody skies.
    Beef Cattle Center

    The Beef Cattle Center serves as the hub of most beef cattle laboratories for SAS and VMRCVM classes. The beef barn serves the SAS teaching, research, and outreach programs in the areas of genetics, physiology, nutrition, herd health, and management of beef cattle. The center maintains registered herds of Angus, Polled Hereford, Charolais, and Simmental cattle, as well as a herd of commercial cows.

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    Copenhaver Sheep Center building in the background with sheep grazining on green grass in the foreground.
    Copenhaver Sheep Center

    The Copenhaver Sheep Center plays a vital role in the teaching, research, and outreach missions of the School of Animal Sciences and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The center currently maintains three flocks for these purposes - registered Suffolk and Dorset flocks, and a flock of hair sheep (St. Croix , Barbados Blackbelly, and various crosses).

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    Ariel view of the Dairy Complex at Kentland Farms. Blue sky, green pastures.
    Dairy Complex

    The Dairy Complex at Kentland Farm is a state-of-the-art facility which allows the efficient use of land with upgrades and incorporated technologies. The 256 milking cows are housed in a freestall barn where feed consumption can be monitored for research. Sand bedding is recycled using a weeping wall system for manure management. Our herd was the first in the nation with both AFILab and Pedometer Plus systems.

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    The William M. Etgen Large Animal Learning Center on Plantation Road
    William M. Etgen Large Animal Learning Center

    The William M. Etgen Large Animal Learning Center is located at the beef center on Plantation Road. This new 10,277 sq. ft. facility provides classrooms, lab space, and animal holding space to support hands-on animal science instruction and research, as well as housing extension activities.

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    Meat Center coolers.
    VT Meat Center

    The Virginia Tech Meat Science Center serves to support the teaching, research and extension activities of the School of Animal Sciences and is fully equipped to process livestock. It is an integral part of our teaching, research and extension activities. Our facility is unique in that it allows students to learn the processes from harvest to fabrication because all our products are processed on site. The Meat Center also sells a wide variety of products that are processed in-house.

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    Horses by a wooden fence on a foggy morning in fall. Yellow foliage from the changing leaves frames the photo.
    Campbell and Smithfield Horse Centers & the Equitation Barn

    Smithfield, Campbell, and the Equitation Barn all support the Virginia Tech equine and equestrian programs. Equine behavior, training, and livestock merchandising classes, the Hokie Harvest Horse Sale, the riding program, the Virginia 4-H Horse program, and many other activities are based here.

Springtime photo of Litton-Reaves Hall under a blue skiy with green grass and trees starting to bud.
Litton-Reaves Hall.

 

Scheduling  

 

To schedule a tours, spaces, or projects within the Dairy Complex, contact the Herd and Farm Committee (dasc-herd-and-farm-comm-g@vt.edu).

Additional Campus Facilities...

include comprehensive data processing facilities maintained by the Computer Center, an electron microscopy laboratory, DNA sequencing facility, animal health and physiology laboratories in the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, and confocal microscope facility in the Fralin Biotechnology Center.

Agricultural Research and Extension Centers

The Shenandoah Valley and Southwest Virginia Agricultural Research and Extension Centers, each 100 miles from campus, provide additional resources for beef cattle forage nutrition and management.

The Tidewater Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Suffolk supports an active off-campus program in swine research and extension.

The Middleburg Agricultural Research and Extension Center, near Washington, D.C., is the centerpiece for a unique program in equine forage nutrition.