The ISU Dairy Farm will soon see changes, including the destruction of several buildings, to fit its future use.

Iowa State will keep the 170 acres located at the south end of campus, used for dairy education from 1907 to 2003, and will maintain several buildings on it that have historical value.

But the rest of the buildings will either be moved or torn down, officials said.

The remaining buildings will still be used for some teaching, and horses will be released to graze on the rest of the land.

Three buildings will be kept for historical and teaching purposes. The “north” dairy barn, the milking parlor and the teaching pavilion, all built before 1925, will remain on site.

“Things that we can move, we have; what we have left is out of date,” said Mark Honeyman, coordinator of ISU Research Farms.

Silos, remnants of heifer barns, cow loafing barns and other similar buildings will be demolished because they are either out of date or unstable, Honeyman said.

The three buildings to be kept will be used for teaching while Iowa State waits for a new site and farm. Right now, animals and students are being transported between Ames and Ankeny to accommodate teaching needs.

However, moving the animals from Ankeny to the Ames site or transporting students to Ankeny for teaching purposes is inconvenient, said Lynn Seiler, associate director of facilities planning and management.

The university hopes to build a new farm 10 minutes south of campus, Seiler said. The Ames location made it difficult to have a dairy because of its location close to the city, Honeyman said. Things such as transporting manure were hard to do. The cost of a new farm is unknown, but some estimates have been made.

“We are estimating 15 to 16 million [dollars] to build a new dairy farm,” Seiler said.

Iowa State is planning to build a new farm with the money that is earned off the sale of the Ankeny farm to the city of Ankeny, Honeyman said. The amount to be made off the farm is not exactly known yet, he said, because the site has to be evaluated by the Environmental Protection Agency because of its use as a federal munitions plant during World War II.

Last summer, the EPA took soil and water samples at the site, Honeyman said, and the agency analyzed the samples during the fall and winter.

“Right now, they’re in the process of interpreting the results,” he said. “It’s hard to predict with the EPA, but we’ll probably have a definitive answer this fall.”

The new dairy farm will still hold the same number of breeds as the old sites did, but will be able to hold more cattle, said Maynard Hogberg, chairman and professor of animal science.

New facilities will enable researchers to do more accurate work, Hogberg said, and it will also be a better teaching environment for students. A new dairy farm is needed to attract more students in the dairy science field, he said.