Dairy Learning Center

Dairy Learning Center
129 South Glover Road
River Falls, WI 54022

College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences
Email: Laura Walsh, Administrative Program Manager
210 Agricultural Science
611 S. 3rd Street
Phone: 715-425-3535

Dairy Learning Center

At UWRF, we strive to make the learning experience for our students an engaging one. Our Dairy Learning Center (DLC) complex offers the latest in dairy technology, allowing our students to acquire skills using the most effective tools. The DLC is located on the Mann Valley Farm, just 2.5 miles northwest of River Falls.

The Dairy Learning Center features:

• Two 25-student classrooms attached to the milking center, expandable to hold groups of 50 for industry events
• A pavilion for livestock sales and shows
• An environmentally-friendly composted bedding housing system for 100 lactating cows
• Systems to minimize wastewater – water to cool the milk will be reused for the livestock, the equipment wash water will be reused to clean the floors
• A waste-handling system that lends itself to research studies on manure resource management
• A Bou-Matic double-6 herringbone parlor with a StepMetrix lameness detection system that will monitor the weight distribution of the cow in order to identify lame animals
• Research bays with Calan gates allowing the herd to be split into groups for nutrition trials. Continuing research on composted bedding systems.
• Both confinement and pasture-based management systems

The DLC is used by many academic programs at UWRF, most notably the Dairy Science program, which is one of the three largest undergraduate dairy science programs in the U.S. with approximately 125 students enrolled.