Maine Perspective Front Page
Down on the Farm
UMaine Students, Faculty Reinvigorating the Witter Center
Heidi Cyr of East Newport stands in the open doorway of the renovated barn and looks down the row of Holsteins in their stalls. Next to a freshly cut hayfield patterned by windrows, this is one of her favorite views.
"This has been a job that has taught me many skills and expanded my work experience tremendously. I would not know half of what I know today if the Witter Center hadn't been here," says Cyr, who this summer was in charge of mowing the farm's acres of fields for silage and hay.
Cyr started working at the Witter Animal Science Center as a second-year animal science major. She was a member of a small staff that was struggling to keep the University's farm alive, despite rounds of budget cuts, deferred maintenance and a changing research mission. The corner was turned last year when the University's 100-head dairy herd was sold and the proceeds used to begin the long-awaited renovations of the facility. For UMaine students like Cyr, the changes couldn't have come soon enough.
"The renovations in the cow barn have turned out great," says Cyr, who graduates in May and is headed for a job with Jackson Laboratories. "News of horses coming has been a huge success with students. In time we'll have a better milking herd, horses, sheep. It's important for a facility like this to make money, but it's even more important to have this facility for students.
"When I came here three years ago, I thought the Witter Center was how a farm was supposed to be. Then I visited other farms," she says. "This past year has been like starting from scratch, but now it's clear that the Center is going to pull ahead. It will just take time."
An air of optimism permeates the Franklin Witter Animal Science Center these days. In the past year that the Center has been closed, renovations, improvements and initiatives have given the farm a future. It is set to reopen to the public in late spring/early summer. With new management, including a seasoned superintendent, new livestock supervisor and involved faculty, the Center holds as much potential as when it was constructed in 1972-73.
But perhaps most important, the Witter Center has become more student-centered than ever. From the management of the University's dairy herd and teaching hands-on animal science to the establishment of a new animal club, University of Maine students have the opportunity to be actively involved. Such a resource can serve as a recruitment and retention tool, while virtually ensuring that an animal science major does not graduate without having hands-on experience with large animals. The excitement of learning by interacting with animals is second only to the efforts of students now working at the Center to be part of the changes taking place.
"This is an excellent opportunity to work hands-on with animals," says Kerry Martell, a senior animal science major from Brookfield, Mass., who transferred to UMaine from the University of South Dakota. "There are a lot of positive people working together here at the Witter Center. Everyone is very goal-oriented right now. People know what they want &endash; a student-friendly, student-run dairy herd. It's all about students working together and solving problems on a farm."
Bruce Wiersma, dean of the College of Natural Sciences, Forestry and Agriculture, and director of the Maine Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, says he is pleased with the progress being made. "The faculty have taken hold of it and the students are incredibly enthused," he says. "I think we have found a purpose for the Center that we struggled for. What was primarily a research facility has been turned into a student-focused learning center."
For the past 24 years, the 400-acre Witter Animal Science Center sitting on a ridge just down the road from the Orono campus has been a working farm and research facility of the Maine Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station. Landmark research on the farm has included large-scale silage studies and the nationally known anaerobic digester, designed to turn organic waste into electricity. In the late '70s, UMaine was well known for its animal nutrition research. In the early '80s, the focus turned more to reproductive physiology research.
But the money to establish and equip the Center was the last large University allocation the farm was to see. The farm was required to be as self-sufficient as possible. Faculty involvement revolved primarily around research at the Center. The Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering was not actively been involved in the management of the Witter Center during the past decade. Faculty with expertise in feeding, reproduction and veterinary care were tapped only as advisors. While students had part-time jobs at Witter, its educational resources remained underutilized.
The public, especially groups of schoolchildren, continued to visit the Center religiously through the years. But gone were the days when families would bring Sunday afternoon picnics to eat on the lawns overlooking the farm where Jerseys, Holsteins, Guernseys and Brown Swiss grazed. Years of budget cuts campuswide included those to the Center, resulting in the sale of the 57-head Jersey herd in 1992 and public outcries that the University was abandoning its land-grant mission. In August 1996, 100-head of Holsteins were sold, leaving 60 heifers and cows from which to build a new, high-quality University herd.
"The stature of the facility was eroding," says Charles Wallace, chair of the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering. "It had deteriorated from a showplace to being a hard-scrabble farm, and the University didn't want it to look like that. It needed to be a place that left a good first impression with people, a facility that, even if it was not the most technologically advanced, would be clean and nice to look at. It had to be a place people would see something going on that would excite them to be part of."
This new chapter in the history of the Witter Center has the most implications for students in their academic and extracurricular activities. Use of the Center as a teaching facility is expected to expand. In addition, students will find more jobs available that impact the daily operation of the Center, as well as greater opportunities to interact with animals through clubs, programs and events.
"When I first came here in 1987, there were 11 full-time workers on the farm, including full-time milkers," says Wallace. "Students only did labor like cleaning stalls. As the support staff numbers have decreased in recent years, students have done more hands-on work. Now what we see changing with the new program is faculty getting involved in management and operation of the farm, and students undertaking day-to-day responsibilities. That's when the facility begins to grow because it is being utilized for teaching.
"Whether or not we're providing education to future or current dairy producers, the emphasis is on supplying industry with educated men and women in the workforce who leave our program realizing they want to be part of the process. In the same way, this is the place to educate the public about animal care, handling and behavior."
Students in agriculture and animal science have changed since the start of the Witter Center. In the 1960s, most students pursuing educations in these areas heralded from agricultural backgrounds. They came "with a lot of practical experience to learn the science," says Jim Weber, a veterinarian and UMaine assistant professor of animal and veterinary science. "Now most students know little about animals. For that reason, a facility like this is important in their education, including their recruitment and retention. And that's why it's more important than ever that the program and facility are more student-friendly than ever before."
Today, one out of 10 UMaine students studying animal science goes on to pursue a career in veterinary medicine. This semester,
there are 38 pre-vet students in the department. Other animal science majors pursue careers in farm management, in animal care or as technicians in medical laboratories.
The plan is to use the Witter Center more in department courses and not just in weekly labs, says Wallace. "We hope to involve students enrolled in courses in different aspects that apply to what is happening at the Center," he says. For instance, the reproductive physiology course in the fall can now involve students overseeing fall animal breeding at the Center. In the spring, not only will animal breeding efforts continue but there is lambing as the traditional spring ritual.
Involving more students in the Center's operation also means there are opportunities for peer education. A student involved in milking can describe and demonstrate the system on-site to others in a class lab. "There will be a lot of student-to-student mentoring," says Weber. "They also will be working as a team. The goal is to apply what they're learning in class. That's the difference between information and knowledge. Once a student uses information, it becomes knowledge."
Nowhere is that blend of theory and practice, and approach to teamwork more important than on the newly formed internship program tentatively named the Black Bear Dairy Guild, modeled after the University of Vermont's student-run dairy herd called the Co-operative for Real Education in Agricultural Management (CREAM). In the one-year experiential learning program worth eight credit-hours, students manage a herd of 30 Holstein that are considered among the highest producing and genetically superior in Vermont. Similarly, UVM has a horse management course called EQUUS, a year-long program in which students perform the horse barn duties, keep records, and help make financial and management decisions associated with a horse boarding facility.
"Most dairy students go elsewhere because they don't think they can get the education at Orono that they can receive at Cornell or New Hampshire," says Wallace. "While we still don't offer courses in dairy management, an internship program like CREAM provides an opportunity for students to get intimately involved in a dairy operation. The University of Vermont's program is a model in which you find students with a range of backgrounds, few of which are in dairy. The dairy students are not involved because they have been doing this kind of management all their lives. Now those people who are interested in dairy and who may have gone to New Hampshire otherwise can come here."
Marcy Guillette is an alumna of Vermont's CREAM program. Guillette graduated from the University of Vermont in May with a degree in animal science. In July, she joined the staff of the Witter Center as its livestock supervisor. She now is not only critical to the care of UMaine's dairy herd but to the mentoring of students who are increasingly drawn to the Center.
"I enjoy working with students and animals, and here I have the opportunity to do two of my favorite things," says Guillette, who grew up on a Vermont dairy farm and has been involved in regional initiatives focused on the future of New England dairy programs. "I also saw this as an opportunity to use my capabilities to help the program, which is being built literally and figuratively."
Student recruitment and retention, coupled with the potential for new areas of research, also are important motives behind the establishment of an equine program. "The horse program, even as wide open as it is right now in direction, has prompted overwhelming response from people," says Weber. "With an area of concentration in horses, we can retain and attract students who go out of state for equine programs. Once the facility is ready for horses, we also can do more research that is funding-related."
The middle dairy barn is now being renovated to house horses. Aged corrugated metal siding is being replaced by wood, cement flooring will be replaced by packed sand and rubber mats, and 24 modular stalls will be installed. When finished, the horse barn will include a wash bay, heated tack and locker room, and areas for loose housing. Just down the hill from the barns, a 100-by-200-foot riding arena will be developed.
Students will be able to lease horse stalls for their animals. This winter, up to 14 horses from a camp on the coast will be housed at the Center.
Also in preparation for this winter, renovations are being made to a small connector barn that was once a dairy maternity ward. It will be used for up to 20 head of sheep donated to the University.
"The changes reflect students' needs more than research needs," says Glenn Dickey, superintendent of the Witter Center and Rogers Farm. "It is a return to the hands-on teaching like 20-30 years ago that the University had gotten away from.
"We used to have one of the best Jersey herds in the nation and one of the best Holstein herds in New England in the show ring and in milk production," says Dickey. "I'd like to see us get back to that and give students a chance to do some of those things. With embryo transplants and other research, we will have a herd that is again looked up to by the dairy industry."
This fall, the newest arrivals at the Witter Center have been calves. Eight were born in August, with eight more due this month. In the spring, the first calves will be born that were part of an embryo transplant research project led by Weber. Weber is working with a small but internationally prominent sector of Maine's dairy industry that specializes in embryo transfer. Support from the embryo transfer industry in Maine, coupled with Weber's embryology research, hold the key to the future of UMaine's dairy science program.
"When animals left the Witter Center, many people in the community thought the farm would not be back, as if that was the final nail in the coffin," says Weber. "In the past, the emphasis was what to do in the short-term to keep the Center running. By taking a year off, the long-term now will be much better off." s
"This is a place where we're dealing with animals and a lot of people &endash; thousands a year," he says. "As University animals and facility, everything must be in tip-top shape."