Tech Wizards Visit Alpaca Farm

Future Windsor 6th and 7th graders didn’t let a little animal waste get in the way of their summer studies. In fact, it was part of the lesson during a visit to the Nyala Alpaca Farm in Vestal.

Tech Wizards students separated fecal matter to test for parasites, stained and labeled it in preparation for centrifuge and timed the heartbeat of a newborn alpaca during a health check-up.

This field trip was part of a year-long Tech Wizards partnership with the Cornell Cooperative Extension. It was the second of three summer field trips.

On July 14 the group went to Cornell’s campus in Ithaca. There they built battery-operated three-wheeled vehicles, visited one of only 10 particle accelerators in the nation and reached into a fistulated cow’s stomach to feel and see the contents that the cow was digesting.