Today was an eventful and tiring day! We started the day off by visiting the Purina Research Farm, this was something that I have been looking forward to since we began this trip. Mainly because I already have a connection to Purina so I have been told all about these facilities but have yet (until today) been able to view them. We got to view 4 out of 5 of their main barns because their swine unit is closed to the public. The highlights of this visit would be the horse treadmill that test the feed and how it effects their endurance and other important things, the other highlight was how technologically advanced there facilities were, like their head gates for the dairy and beef cattle. Unfortunately there wasn’t anything “top secret” of mind blowing but was still cool to be able to see first hand.
We then drove to Colombia, MO which is also home of University of Missouri where we got to explore there agricultural buildings. Throughout these building we got to see why our school is better but also things that we can envy that we don’t have like glow in the dark pigs! But there were other sort of cool things like how much farm land the school gets to do research on and how there farms were set up for the learning environment. After all the ag related stuff we got to get a tour of there rec center and also their book store for some souvenirs. Oh! I almost forgot we got free ice cream and I personally chose there famous tiger stripes flavor, all their ice cream is made on there campus which is really cool also.
We ended the night with the precence of Cracker Barrel in our stomach and a dip in the hotel pool! Check back with you tomorrow after we hit three location starting in St. Joeseph, MO!
TTFN
-Molly K.
