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From Crops to Cows to Cream

A new milking center was cause for celebration for North Carolina’s dairy industry Friday Nov. 9. More than 100 people came out to view the new building designed to enhance the university’s teaching, research and extension programs in both food and animal sciences.

The center includes milking stalls where about 150 cows are milked twice a day, producing 1,000 gallons a day of milk that’s trucked to Schaub Hall and used in Howling Cow ice cream and other dairy products.

The center’s dedication and ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Lake Wheeler Road Field Laboratory’s Dairy Educational Unit mark an important milestone in the development of a vertically integrated dairy enterprise system that encompasses not just the dairy farm unit but also the Schaub Hall Dairy Pilot Plant.

CALS Dean Richard Linton described the system as “a living laboratory where we can take students through the entire integration from the farm, through processing, through manufacturing, to the development of wonderful products.

“We can now do things fully from the farm all the way to the fork,” Linton added.

“It also provides us a great opportunity to lead in the southeast region … in dairy science and education and to build our capacities for the dairy industry here in the state.” Read more.