Ground broke today on a $3.5-million addition to the College of Veterinary Medicine meant to help prevent infectious diseases from spreading in animals.
The new facility, called the Matilda R. Wilson Pegasus Critical Care Center, is intended to be completed this fall and will help keep infections from horses and other large animals, as well as provide intensive care to ill animals, veterinary officials said.
"The facility will be a very unique facility that really no other veterinary school has to offer," College of Veterinary Medicine Dean Lonnie King said. "It will improve the reputation of MSU as a major equine center. At the same time, it gives us a capacity and a facility to do things that we can't do as well currently."
The project is paid for by a fund in the name of former Trustee Matilda Wilson, who served on the MSU Board of Trustees in the 1930s.
To isolate animals that are infectious, the building will be free-standing near the site of the larger Veterinary Medical Center and will be about 9,000 square feet in size.
In its initial stages, the building was attached, but that idea was changed upon further consideration, said Jeff Kacos, director of Campus Planning and Administration.
"Since it's an isolation center, there was a much greater risk of contamination," he said. "Having a physical separation between the two buildings, it's a much more efficient way to quarantine animals."
Construction for the project was identified in the 2020 Vision master plan, Kacos said.
A tentative timeline for the project has the building's framework enclosed by March, with the entire facility completed in September, said Thomas Herdt, chairman of the large animals clinical sciences department.
With more than 3,000 horses and nearly 1,000 members of other species seen by the veterinary clinic each year, it's important to ensure the protection of the animals from disease, Herdt said.
Not only should animals in the regular hospital be protected from disease, but animals in the clinic also should be protected from each other, Herdt said.
The center will provide a high level of intensive care not currently available to ill animals, Herdt said, especially animals such as foals and baby calves who are still very young and susceptible to disease.
Inside, the new center will feature 10 individual stalls that are all separately ventilated, to ensure that no animals inside the facility will breathe the same air as any other animal, thereby preventing the spread of disease, said Frederik Derksen, a professor in the large animal clinical sciences department.
Other features include a specialized manure system and clinical pathology lab to test samples, Derksen said.
"We're the only veterinary school in Michigan, and we need to be able to accommodate and treat all the diseases that our large animals have, so we need to be able to have the facilities to treat all the diseases that we encounter in the state," Derksen said.
