Dairy research was moved from the present site of the agriculture campus to Cherokee Farm in 1935. In 1999, as part of early conversations about updating the 1994 Master Plan, President Gilley and board of trustees members began to investigate options for relocation of the Dairy Farm to provide space for intramural fields and additional research facilities on the Cherokee Farm. The 2001 update of the master plan incorporated these precepts.
In March 2008 Institute of Agriculture officials notified employees of the plans to close the dairy research farm in order to provide the farm to the UT system administration to allow construction of research facilities. (Intramural fields were no longer contemplated.) Employees were retained in other positions, and work was begun on a new dairy research location in Blount County, a $12 million project for which Bullock Smith & Partners was the architect. Because there would be a three-year time lag prior to being able to open the new facility, equipment and livestock were sold, with the prime milking herd of one hundred Holsteins being relocated to the Middle Tennessee Research and Education Center, near Spring Hill, in 2008. The milking herd had recently maintained a rolling herd average of 24,513 pounds of milk per cow, which is about 2,850 gallons of milk per cow. The barns on the Cherokee Farm were demolished in 2009.