Infrastructure and User Services
The facility contains a specialised dairy research farm with 550 dairy cows in four units each with a specific research focus, and an integrated dairy farm where data on the whole nutrient cycle at farm level is collected and studied. These units have facilities for research in animal nutrition, greenhouse gas emissions, animal welfare, behaviour, manure treatment, grazing experiments, precision livestock farming, sensor technology, breeding technologies, and a modern data collection system to collect and store individual data. Data are continuously collected. The continuously updated data structure makes it possible to collect large or complex (real time) data sets (data acquisition), to process applications (data utilisation) for purposes of integration of all data to smarter and more precise system architecture including new forms of automation (robotics).
With 500 dairy cows, six barns, training and meeting facilities and 327 hectares of land, Dairy Campus is the only one of its kind in the world. We are part of Wageningen Livestock Research. It’s an inspiring environment for everyone working in the dairy sector. At Dairy Campus, we offer facilities for experimenting, innovating, and developing and sharing knowledge. Our aim is to make new information available to practitioners as fast as possible. Each barn at Dairy Campus has its own research theme, such as animal feed, milk, manure or environment and is equipped with facilities and techniques for different types of experiments.
Every week we welcome approximately 10.000 visitors from all over the world and run numerous activities covering various areas of expertise.
Examples/description of the type of research
Among other things, our cowsheds and fields are used for:
- Animal feed and efficient feeding
- Reducing emissions on NH3 and GHG
- Manure processing and refinery
- Grass, soil and water quality
- Grazing systems including genotyping
- Raising youngstock
- Smart Farming
- Housing and floors
- Sustainable breeding
- Lifespan and resilience
- Water flows on a dairy farm
- Biodiversity
- Milk harvesting technologies
- Milk composition
- Green energy
How to access the infrastructure
Our infrastructure is physically accessible. Results can also be followed remotely via various available data.
