Dairy

Prairieland Dairy, LLC Firth, NE

Co-Owner Dan Rice and the employees of Prairieland Dairy milk around 700 cows, three times a day.  Operating what Rice calls a "enclosed system"� Prairieland cleans their barns with recycled flushwater which runs to a separator.  There the liquids are pumped to a lagoon and land-applied while the solids are piled for a week before being composted in windrows by a Brown Bear PTO-PA 35C auger aerator attached to a farm tractor.  By turning the manure three times a week for six weeks, Rice is able to dry the 90% moisture manure into sanitary, 30% moisture compost that he uses for bedding thus completing his "enclosed system"�  In addition to cutting their bedding costs from $2,000/month for sawdust to $1,000/month to produce the composted bedding, Prairieland is selling about 25% of their compost to landscapers on the retail market for $25 per/yd, a nice profit from their $5 per/yd production cost.  The compost has a 2:1:1 NPK rating and a 95% coliform kill rate.  Rice has been able to cut the dairy's somatic cell count in half (from 450,000 to 200,000), their lowest in three years.

Northwest Missouri State University Laboratory & Research Center Maryville, MO

Dr. Dennis Padgett, a professor of agriculture at Northwest Missouri State University (NWMSU), is conducting exciting research in biofuels.  NWMSU's eighty cow dairy laboratory� is transforming cow and pig manure into pelletized biofuel by drying the waste product with a Brown Bear 24 Series Paddle Aerator attached to a skid steer with high flow hydraulics.  After flushing the parlor and going through a separator, the solids are composted and dried in a hoop shed from 90% to 35% moisture.  In the hoop shed, the raw manure (90% moisture) is added to a windrow of dried compost (35% moisture) at a 1 to 3 ratio.  A biodegradable bulking agent such as chopped corn and/or bean stalks is also added.  Two passes with the Brown Bear aerator thoroughly blends and mixes the materials and builds one windrow.  Through a process of airing and heat build up, the windrows dry to the desired 35% moisture in two days (being turned twice daily).  From there the material is hauled to the university's pellet mill where the compost is palletized and made ready for the power plant's boilers where the manure becomes energy.  The finished compost meets all CAFO regulations, so could be land-applied or sold on the compost market.

Milk Unlimited Atlantic, IA

Milk Unlimited, a 3800 head dairy, uses a Brown Bear Model 500 to compost 25,000 tons/yearly of manure for bedding.  The manure comes off of a separator at about 30% solids and is taken directly to the compost site.  Dr. Kelley Cunningham, the dairy's manager, is now supplying half of his bedding from the compost over a 9 month period (he doesn't compost during the winter months) at a cost savings of about $45,000 per year.  He turns the compost for six weeks (5 to 6 hours per week) before returning the transformed material to the barns as bedding.  He is working to double the amount of compost he produces in order to supply all of the bedding during the 9 months of composting for a savings of $90,000 per year.  His windrow temperatures consistently run at 150 degrees F which provides good sterilization.  He has had no increase in somatic cell count (SSC) since he started using composting for bedding. 

Bill McPhee Kindee, MI

William (Bill) McPhee raises 1800 replacement dairy heifers on his farm in Kindee, Michigan. Concerned with new CAFO regulations coming into effect in '06, he purchased a used Brown Bear composting unit that he has been using for the past two seasons.  Bill normally scrapes his stalls and stacks material in the winter from December to April.  Then he uses the Brown Bear to tear down the piles and form them into windrows, which eliminates extra labor and equipment since the Brown Bear is the only machine available that builds its own initial windrows.  He actively composts from April to very late November when the weather gets too cold for the windrows to retain high temperatures. There is no carbon added to the mix except the small amount of bedding that comes with the manure.  Composting reduces the material's volume by 50%.  Average precipitation in this area off Lake Huron is 16" of rainfall and 24" of snowfall annually. Bill is currently enrolling in the MEAP program in Michigan which requires him to have zero run-off and makes his facility exempt from federal CAFO regulations.