UNH Today

University of New Hampshire students enrolled in the Cooperative Real Education in Agricultural Management (CREAM) course will host an open house at the UNH Thomas P. Fairchild Dairy Teaching and Research Center from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, April 24, 2016. The open house is free and open to the public.

The public is invited to learn more about the UNH Fairchild Dairy Teaching and Research Center, a facility of the NH Agricultural Experiment Station in the UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, by taking guided and self-guided tours and enjoying homemade ice cream, games, and crafts. Visitors also will have a chance to listen to the heartbeat of cows using a stethoscope.

Now in its 26^th year, CREAM is a student-run cooperative in which 25 UNH students, with the help of advisors, operate and manage a small business – a herd of 25 to 30 registered Holstein dairy cattle. Students milk, feed, and care for the herd every day of the school year, and also do outreach activities for the college and general public.

CREAM provides UNH animal science, dairy management and pre-veterinary students, as well as students in the UNH Thompson School of Applied Science, plus students from other majors, with a hand’s-on learning model that helps them understand:

• The applications of science to the management of a dairy herd.
• How to work with other team members in a cooperative venture.
• The work and decision-making skills required in production agriculture.
• How to manage and operate a small business.

“Students take the course to work with the cows, but soon realize the course is as much about management and working with people, as it is about cows,” says Drew Conroy, CREAM advisor and professor of applied animal science at the Thompson School of Applied Science. 

The UNH Fairchild Dairy Teaching and Research Center serves to help NH Agricultural Experiment Station researchers develop new knowledge and management expertise geared directly to state and regional stakeholders. It houses about 90 milking-age cows and approximately 70 growing animals, including the CREAM herd. The center’s primary research area is dairy nutrition and reproductive biology. The dairy has been recognized numerous times by the state of New Hampshire, Dairy Farmers of America, and Dairy One for consistently producing high-quality milk.

Founded in 1887, the NH Agricultural Experiment Station at the UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture is UNH’s original research center and an elemental component of New Hampshire's land-grant university heritage and mission. We steward federal and state funding, including support from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, to provide unbiased and objective research concerning diverse aspects of sustainable agriculture and foods, aquaculture, forest management, and related wildlife, natural resources and rural community topics. We maintain the Woodman and Kingman agronomy and horticultural farms, the Macfarlane Greenhouses, the Fairchild Dairy Teaching and Research Center, and the Organic Dairy Research Farm. Additional properties also provide forage, forests and woodlands in direct support to research, teaching, and outreach.