New South Farms / Beef/Sheep Unit

On August 26, 2003, the University of Illinois broke ground on its new Beef/Sheep Unit, the first of six stages of the New South Farms project to modernize and relocate the South Farms south of Windsor Road. The next five stages will be the "Bioprocessing Center, feed mill, and the crops and engineering complexes", "Horticulture, environmental, and animal sciences maintenance and machinery storage facility", "Dairy facility", "Swine farrowing, finishing, and isolation buildings", and "Horse and poultry complexes". [1]

The $10M facility had an additional price tag of $13.7M for infrastructure and land costs. Dedicated September 1, 2004, [2] the new facility is a tour-de-force in technological advancement, including its new $2M waste management system. Using 6 tanks capable of managing up to 3.6 million gallons of animal waste, the system [3] begins with the slotted floors of the animal holding pens, where waste falls into a water stream which flows into the holding tanks that then separate liquid and solid wastes. Liquid waste is fed through underground pipes from the tanks directly to the fields, while solid waste is composted and either used internally or sold in the community. [4]