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Manure separator works great for Deckers Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Agri News staff writer
WESTGATE, Iowa -- The Deckers say installing a manure separator is the piece of the puzzle that makes the digester on their Top Deck Holstein farm complete.
The separated solids are used for bedding.
The Decker brothers -- Derek Justin and Jason -- run a 720-head dairy operation with their parents, Roger and Judy, near Westgate.
"We love the separator,'' said Derek Decker during an Iowa State University Extension-sponsored open house at the farm. More than 100 people attended.
The Deckers received a grant from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to install a plug flow anaerobic manure digester in 2000. They worked with Alliant Energy and Dan Meyer, an ag engineering field specialist with Iowa State University Extension, to build the setup, which started converting manure to methane in 2002.
The Deckers and Meyer received a Natural Resources Conservation Service grant for manure separator research in November 2004. The mechanical separator and a 30-foot by-70-foot storage shed were installed just west of the digester by Genex Farm Systems of New Prague, Minn., and the Deckers started separating solids in February.
ISU researchers Leo Timms and Robert Burns are studying the herd to see what impact the separated solids have on cow health.
The FAN separator weights 1,892 pounds and takes a 9 horsepower motor. It is 26 inches wide and 91 inches long. A pump delivers manure from the digester overflow pit to the separator.
The separator squeezes liquid out of the solids and drops them to a pile below where they are ready to be used. The bedding material is odorless.
The Deckers used oat hulls for bedding before they got the separator. With abundant separated solids, they use three times as much bedding material as before.
"That adds a lot to cow comfort,'' Derek said.
He estimates that they're saving $3,000 to $3,500 per month in bedding costs.
The Deckers haven't had problems using separated solids for bedding.
"Our somatic cell count dropped from 250,000 to 220,000 since we started,'' Derek said.
ISU's Timms doesn't expect that Top Deck will have mastitis problems from the bedding.
"This place does a tremendous job,'' Timms said. "Cows have clean legs and the Deckers are scraping their alleys. Cleanliness and cow comfort are important to them."
The Deckers' system generates more solids than they can use, but they plan to sell some to nearby operations. They have also given the material to neighbors and relatives for flower and vegetable gardens.
Alliant Energy, working with Unison Solutions of Dubuque, replaced all the electrical generating equipment at the farm in 2005, and the digester was restarted. The new equipment works much better, said Jason Decker.
The methane digester offsets about two-thirds of the farms' electrical costs. Alliant owns the electrical generating equipment. The Deckers own the building and maintain the equipment with the help of Unison.
Jason said that they're glad they installed the manure digester, but cautioned that the way Iowa law treats on-farm electrical generation, a farmer has to partner with an electric company and receive some grant funding to make it feasible.
He'd recommend the manure separator to any operation that has more than 200 cows.
"This is friendly to the environment,'' Jason said. "We have fewer solids going into our lagoon so we don't have to clean it out as often. It also cuts down on odor, and there's a lot less P and K going on our fields."
"I can't see a downside to it,'' said Derek. |
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