1. Laboratory Animal Resources and Research Facility (LARR). LARR is the centrally administered support service/program for animal research and teaching programs at Texas A&M University. The LARR facility is AAALAC accredited and is available to all TAMU faculty. The LARR facility totals 19,940 square feet and consists of 8 modular aluminum buildings (two climate controlled), a clinical support building and an office area. This facility provides housing and maintenance for rats, mice, dogs, cats, rabbits, swine, poultry and small ruminants. LARR also provides specialized facilities for investigator use. These include a well maintained surgery area with two operating suites, an X-ray unit and radiology suite, a necropsy area, and specialized animal housing facilities to accommodate biohazards projects, hazardous chemical projects, transgenic animal projects and projects that use radioisotopes.
2. Kleberg Laboratory Animal Research Facility. The Kleberg Laboratory Animal Research Facility is located in the basement of the Kleberg Center, and is available to all TAMU faculty. The 4,000 square foot facility consists of 7 animal rooms, and two procedural rooms to support clinical research activities. This facility also has a cage-cleaning room, a feed storage and mixing room and a necropsy cooler. This facility is ideally suited to house and maintain rats and mice.
3. Nutrition/Physiology Center. The nutrition/physiology center is located at the Animal Science Research Teaching and Extension Complex. This facility includes a 17,300 square foot climate-controlled building. This research building consists: (1) two support laboratories, (2) a surgery area with two operating suites to support large animal surgical procedures, (3) eight animal rooms designed to house and maintain cattle, sheep, goats or pigs, (4) two large-animal respiration-calorimetry chambers and (5) a room designed to support radioisotope studies. In addition, there are animal facilities located adjacent to the main research building that are designed to individually feed and house cattle and sheep, and a feed storage and mixing facility to prepare experimental diets.
4. Poultry Science Teaching, Research and Extension Center. This facility, located west of the main campus, was built in 1985. The Center consists of 17 research and industry style buildings. Six buildings are used for rearing meat chickens, turkeys and game birds of various species. A Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix) colony is also maintained at the Center. All buildings are designed for research; two broiler-chicken growing facilities contain 40 pens that can house 50 birds per pen. An environmental control building consists of two warm chambers and one cold chamber. A hypobaric chamber is available to simulate high altitude environments. A nutritional studies building complete with purified diet mixing facilities consists of several climate controlled rooms designed for battery rearing of poultry. A Weigh-Tronix fully automatic computerized feed mill supplies research diets for the Center. Laboratories are located at the Center, complete with tissue culture and microbiological research equipment. Complete poultry and egg processing facilities can prepare samples to the point of human consumption. Equipment for further processing value-added food products completes the processing laboratory.
5. Small Animal Clinical Nutrition Research Facility. This facility is located in the Department of Small Animal Medicine and Surgery of the College of Veterinary Medicine, and consists of 8 environmentally controlled rooms with small animal cages plus associated kennel/run areas. These rooms contain over 500 animal cages equipped to house dogs, cats, birds and exotic animals. While primarily used in support of the Veterinary Teaching Hospital veterinary patient referral activities, use of these facilities for clinical nutrition research can be scheduled on a daily (out-patient clinical trials) or longer term (metabolic and diet intervention studies) basis. Separate laboratories of Gastroenterology and Comparative Nutrition are directed by Nutrition Faculty members. These laboratories support biochemical and molecular laboratory studies in the areas of protein and lipid biochemistry as well as serve the clinical laboratory support needs clinical Veterinary Teaching Hospital faculty research.
6. Aquacultural Research and Teaching Facility. The aquacultural research and teaching facility is administered by the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, and is available to support research activities in the areas of bioenergetics and nutrition of fish including channel catfish, tilapia, red drum, hybrid striped bass and largemouth bass. This facility is comprised of 5 buildings that include space for: offices (2,000 ft2), analytical laboratories (1,000 ft2), feed preparation and water chemistry laboratories (400 ft2) and fish culture systems for the maintenance of fish stocks and conducting replicated experiments (6,400 ft2). Additionally, this facility has 36 0.1-acre earthen ponds to maintain and reproduce experimental animals and conduct research under conditions of commercial production.
7. Applied Exercise Science Laboratory Facility. The Applied Exercise Science Laboratory occupies 4400 square feet in the Netum Steed Physiology Research and Conditioning Facility at Texas A&M University. The laboratory contains over $500,000 worth of state-of-the-art physiology research and teaching equipment which includes: (1) a temperature & humidity controlled environmental chamber, (2) two automated metabolic gas analysis systems for measuring O2 consumption, CO2 production, and cardiac output, (3) computerized spirometer for pulmonary function and lung volume assessment, (4) two electrocardiographic stress testing systems with heavy-duty treadmills, (5) electronically braked and friction braked research grade cycle ergometers, (6) phlebotomy laboratory with blood chemistry analysis and plasma volume assessment capability, and (7) equipment to evaluate body composition using both skinfolds and hydrostatic weighing.
