Facilities

The Department of Animal and Poultry Sciences is located in Litton-Reaves Hall which was constructed in 1981. The department shares the building with the Department of Dairy Science, and maintains close relationships and active collaboration with dairy science.  

Laboratory and Animal handling facilities

These facilities provide support for the more intensive elements of the department's research programs. 

The Virginia Tech Meat Science Center serves to support the teaching, research and extension activities of the Animal and Poultry Science Department 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, please see Meat Center website for more details.

Biosafety level 2 animal research facilities are located in Litton-Reaves Hall.  The department maintains a 200-ewe sheep flock, a 150-cow beef herd, a 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.

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.

These 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, embryo manipulation and microinjection facilities in the Department of Dairy Science, and confocal microscope facility in the Fralin Biotechnology Center.