Its almost show time!

So it is the night before the competition. Our last group member and our coach have flown in, and we are hitting the hay early tonight! We have to be up and pick up our case for 8 am and have it completed by 1 pm.

When we win tomorrow, we will be given more information on our case and must present on Saturday morning. We have to have the extended presentation completed by 1 am on Saturday morning. Tomorrow is going to be a longggggg day!!

Yesterday we tried to do our own tour of the University of Guelph. Luckily we stopped by the right offices. We stopped at the Animal Science office hoping we could get someone to show us around their facilities. Andy Robinson, the chair of Animal & Poultry Science was nice enough to drop what he was doing and give us a tour of their barns and research facilities that are located on campus! They have a brand new multi-million dollar equine facility, and quite up-to-date dry-cow dairy facilities as well. I was impressed by the level of the infrastructure that was at a University (I guess maybe Ontario government sets aside more money in their budget for post secondary then Alberta does [particularly agriculture].) It was great to see such great animal handling and science facilities at the college- goes to prove the value Canadians have in agriculture.

We also stopped at the crop science building and found the facilities manager to give us a tour of their crop research end of things. We were able to take a look at the growth rooms they have for different experiments ranging from disease treatments (finally got to see what club root really looks like!) to nutrient deficiencies. It was interesting to see how they plant the seeds and how they grow them to replicate a real field.

We would like to extend our many thanks to Andy and Dietmar for their excellent tours! You may have just convinced us (well got me thinking about it anyways) to possibly attend grad school at the University of Guelph. Your facilities are fantastic and the atmosphere is great!

Now I better get to bed so I have a clear head for the competition tomorrow! Hopefully your won't hear form me for a few days..... that means we did well and have no time for posts! :)