In the nine years the Discovery Farms program has been operating, Dennis Frame has been able to identify high-risk situations leading to pollution from runoff.

Phosphorus is an abundant nutrient in dairy manure – sometimes more abundant than what an individual dairy needs. Now, thanks to a two-step chemical/mechanical process developed by Kemira and available through Environmental Resolutions, dairymen can remove and bind much of the phosphorus to the manure solids, thus leaving the liquids low in phosphorus and ready for irrigation.

There’s no bedding like sand bedding and that’s all Vern Scherping wanted to use on his dairy after converting to a freestall setup. But once it started taking a toll on his manure-handling equipment and soils, he knew he needed to find a better way to manage the sand, so Scherping began looking for a way to reclaim the sand bedding. The old system required pushing manure down the center lane to a reception pit. They hauled 40 loads every six days and were also in need of long-term storage.Scherping Farms in Little Falls, Minnesota, is surrounded by wetlands and must keep to a 300-acre footprint. Knowing most manure management systems would not work in this scenario, Scherping contacted Matt Silbernick at Genex Farm Systems in Melrose, Minnesota, to help devise a plan that would suit his family’s land-locked 800-cow dairy.