Tuesday, May 27, 2014

05/27/14 University of Wyoming Research Station

Today we spent the day at University of Wyoming Research Station learning a bit about what they do to support sustainable agriculture in Wyoming. The research station does research on livestock efficiency, cropping systems, and does variety trials of different cereal crops, oil seed crops and other crops.

The livestock research focuses on feed efficiency. They use a grow safe system in their feeding troughs that recognizes the animal by a tag on their ear and weighs how much food is eaten, how much force the animal eats with and the size of the bite per animal. The data is gathered and transferred to a computer that shows how efficient the animal is at converting feed to muscle and fat. This system has been useful for breeding and heritability purposes.

In addition to their research on livestock UW is also looking at different systems of cropping. They have done research on conventional wheat, no-till wheat, and organic wheat. They also have done research on different diseases that effect sugar beets, dry edible beans, and potatoes. They have also done research on biofuel production of canola, safflower, and sunflowers.

Another part of the research station we saw was their high tunnel greenhouse. The high tunnel is a passive greenhouse which means it uses no outside energy to run it. They use it to run experiments on a variety of plants and were growing quinoa, guar, and a variety of other fruits, vegetables, and other grains. Their also run workshops to inform people in Wyoming about using high tunnels and show farmers how to set them up at their own farms.

The University of Wyoming has its hands in a number of projects in Wyoming and is a great resource for education, research and outreach for farmers and

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