By Chip Chandler
Ground was broken Nov. 10 on the West Texas A&M University Foundation’s innovative, $15 million research feedlot complex.
The WTAMU Foundation Research Feedlot and the Paul F. and Virginia J. Engler Foundation Feedlot Education Facility will provide a state-of-the-art education for WT students, directly benefitting beef producers around the Panhandle, the state and the world.
Support for the multimillion-dollar facility comes from a combination of individual donors and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“Thanks to our generous donors and the steadfast partnership with the WTAMU Foundation, we are going to have a research feedlot designed for strengthening the fed-beef and related industries through research, innovation and education,” WT President Walter V. Wendler said in prepared remarks. “This feedlot, coupled with the other facilities and disciplines, will serve as a hub for discovery—where science meets soil, where data meets hard work, and where students learn not only the how but the why behind feeding a nation.”
The feedlot and education building will help maintain WT’s leadership in large food animal teaching, research and service through the Paul Engler College of Agriculture and Natural Science and the Department of Agricultural Sciences .
“This project is the result of effort and action of hundreds of people from the University, industry and government who rallied around a common desire to position WT as the prime institution for research and education in the area of beef cattle feeding and meat production,” said Dr. Kevin Pond, dean of the Engler College of Agriculture and Natural Science. “It is a textbook example of what happens by working together toward a common goal without worrying about who gets the credit.”
Planning for the new facility has been ongoing for several years, culminating in a 2024 land legacy gift of 42.84 acre s adjacent to WT’s Nance Ranch by brothers and Canyon ranchers Mike and Gary Kuhlman, as well as in a $2.1 million USDA grant for the attached education center.
The Engler Foundation gave $2 million to the project, and Champion Feeders gave an additional $1 million to the effort.
“This research feedlot represents what is best about the Texas Panhandle—a spirit of hard work, innovation and collaboration,” Wendler said. “The feedlot will connect our students to opportunity, our faculty researchers to impact, and WT to the people we serve.”
Construction is expected to begin in the winter on the education center and later in 2026 on the feedlot.
Because the USDA grant required that the recipient of the grant own the education facility, the WTAMU Foundation will own the building and feedlot, both of which will be managed and operated by the University itself.
“Building a research feedlot aligns well with the Foundation’s mission to support WT’s goal to redefine excellence in higher education and be a regionally responsive research university,” said Shyla Buckner, president of the WTAMU Foundation, in prepared remarks.
The combined facilities, which will be constructed southwest of the existing WT feedlot near Nance Ranch east of Canyon, is expected to include an educational center with a classroom and small auditorium; 90 10-head pens; 40 70-head pens; state-of-the-art technology for monitoring and feed manufacture and delivery; and a top-of-the-line animal-processing facility and feed mill.
The addition of the research feedlot further solidifies WT’s classification as a Research University by the Carnegie Foundation.
Since 2021, agricultural research funding at WT has increased by 161 percent, and research funding requests have surged by 434 percent, said Dr. Angela Spaulding, vice president for research and compliance and dean of the Graduate School .
Source : wtamu.edu