Successful Manure Management Program

At Hatfield’s Country View Family Farms

MICROBE-LIFT (AquaClean ACF-32) produced better than expected results, paying for itself with greater yields in swine production, greater crop yields from land-farming…while lowering flies infestations and almost eliminating odor from the manure storage pits.

Country View Family Farms (CVFF), a subsidiary of Hatfield Quality Meats Company of Pennsylvania, reported that ACF-32 had significantly improved odor control and sludge (solids) reduction in their manure management program at trials in several of their Swine Farm Operations. In addition, the Coop Farmers stated that they had less fly infestations in their barns, lower swine mortality rates due to better health conditions, and the big surprise was significantly greater crop yields from land-farming with MICROBE-LIFT/AquaClean treated manure and compost runoff.

Sounds to good to be true, but with trials results, starting in early 2000, have been repeated over and over again…and now ACF-32 is being used in some 80 CVFF Farms in Western Pennsylvania. The results to date are simple; every single Coop Farmer using the product is happy with the results of the manure management program. CVFF is one of the largest swine farm coops in the United States, with over 200 Grow Farms and 50 Sow Facilities. They claim that it has worked every time, and now they plan to roll out the program to their other facilities.

Raising swine is a challenging business. Environmental and Public Health issues have been of real concern to Farm Operators worldwide. The increasing demand for production, and the market pressures for price controls, have weighted heavily on Swine Producers. The economics of swine production have lead to consolidation into larger and larger facilities, which has lead to greater number of swine at each facility, and therefore a concentration of waste by-products, in these industrialized farms. As such, manure management has become a very important issue affecting down stream water quality, local odor control, as well as solid waste disposal. EPA Regulations are being enacted and enforced concerning: Odor Control, as residential homes encroach on farmland; Water Quality, as pollution impact available water recourses; and Solid Wastes, as land-farming is restricted due to nitrogen run-off and land-fill close downs.

AQUACLEAN/MICROBE-LIFT treatment has proven to be an environmentally safe and economical solution to meet the challenges of manure management on its ever-increasing scale. AquaClean helps Swine Farmers maintain the highest level of integrity in animal welfare and bio-security, while providing safe and wholesome products that their consumers can trust.

Case Studies at CVFF Coop Farms

PFLEEGOR FARM, Lewisburg, Pa 2002 Hog Manure Trials

Gary Pfleegor is a CVFF Contract Grower operating a compact 15-acre, two barn facility on a tract of land that includes his personal home. This Swine Farm is relatively new and Gary has incorporated some of the latest technologies to optimize his Grow-Out Operation. His barns are kept in excellent condition. They are cleaned and the surfaces sanitized following each “grow cycle” to reduce potential problems within each production colony.

Gary used ACF-32 to improve the condition of the HOG manure for easier transfer at the time of pumping, as the pits had developed a problem with sludge and bottom solids, and the pits had to be agitated, which made it harder to spray on the fields.

Gary worked with his Contract Pumper to evaluate ACF-32 performance in: 1) improving manure removal and reduction in bottom solids, 2) odor and fly reduction, as Gary was convinced that the heavy fly populations were a contributing factor in the health of his herd. In addition, his home was located extremely close to his barns, so any improvement in odor and fly reduction would improve conditions for his operation and as well as his own living conditions.

One barn was treated in 2000, with six gallons of ACF-32 applied to the 350,000/gallon storage pit after pumping out the waste pit. This was followed by one gallon each week for the next four weeks, and then maintenance treatment of one gallon each month until the next waste removal six months later.

During the first year’s trial Gary reported a reduction in odor and fly populations in the treated barn, with these results evident almost immediately. However, the results were confirmed at the time of waste removal when the pit’s bottom and sides were found to be extremely clean and the two feet of prior waste solids, which had usually remained in the pit after pumping, was completely gone. Following this, Gary treated both barns with ACF-32 in 2002. He reports that his herd health is in significantly better health, its mortality rate has been reduced for 5% to 2%, and there is much less odor in the barns and surrounding area, and far few flies.

With regards to the impact of fly reduction, Gary remains convinced that fly reduction and their control is most important to the facilities health control issues, as flies transmit potential deceases for the waste pit to the hogs. When flies seem to return, Gary simply applies one additional gallon to each side of the barn’s pits and flies are eliminated within 12 hours. Gary said ACF-32 just makes going to the barn a lot more pleasant, and he has not seen a solid manure buildup since using AquaClean.

In addition Gary and his family have benefited greatly, as they can now leaves there windows open on any day or evening, even during the hottest of weather. He said could not do this before to using AquaClean due to the high level of odor and the large fly populations.

Now for the big surprise…the treated manure waste was then land-farmed as fertilizer in surrounding corn fields. The results were incredible. First, there was no odor during pumping, transportation and spreading (spraying) the fields. Obviously this made everyone quite happy, as there had been many complaints from the Community in the past. But what made the Farmers even happier was the impact on Crop Yields, at harvest they had a 50% increase…increasing from 120 to 180 bushels of corn per acre! Therefore, what was going to be a cost of business…treating the manure pits…was now a profit center that more than paid for the treatment with increased Crop Yield.

Five Year Trial at Jim Brubaker’s 600-Acre Farm

At the recent World Hog Expoin Iowa, one of the largest CVFF Contract Growers, Jim Brubaker, reported his experience using MICROBE-LIFT/HOG over the last five years in his deep pit barns on his 600-acre farm, and was extremely pleased with the results he has seen with MICROBE-LIFT.

He reported that MICROBE-LIFT completely eliminated problems with the surface and bottom solids in his deep pits (500,000/gal/pits), eliminated almost all of the odor in the barn's and significantly lowered odors when applying the treated manure to his farm land, while reducing flies which he attributed to the improved health of his swine.

However these were not the only benefit, as he closely monitors his crop yields and realized that he had increased corn production from 120 bushels per acre, to 180 per acre from the land treated with MICROBE-LIFT manure. Jim said that this was a significant benefit, generating more than enough increased income to cover the treatment program. In addition he tracked the nitrogen content of the soil and found that MICROBE-LIFT helped stabilized and fix the nitrogen for a much longer period of the crop cycle. He is working with a University at this time to further document the specific mechanisms involved, but the benefits are clear today.

In simple terms, the University is studying MICROBE-LIFT (AquaClean) to more fully understand and document how its biological cultures help the natural process in establishing a bio-mass that breaks down the organic waste in the manure pits, convert the solids into cell structure. The microorganisms require nutrients for their cell synthesis and growth. In this process they actually store the nutrients, which allows the nutrients to remain available to the plants over a much longer period of time, as well as allows the microbes to attach to soil and carbon (organic) matter lowering nutrient loss through run-off and oxidation.

Farmer Boy Agricultural Supply Co, Contract Pumper Trial

In Western Pennsylvania, a CVFF Sow Farm had problems with their large pull-plug operations. The shallow pits in the barns were blocked with sludge, which lead to further sludge issues in their two million gallon collection pits. One of these collection pits had developed a cone shaped sludge pile measuring some 18 feet high from the pits bottom to the top of the water level when full.

A low dosage treatment program was developed for this pull-plug operation in 2006, which resolved the shallow pit problems in the barns within the first 60 days of treatment. Then in the Spring of 2007, when the two million gallon collection pits were pumped out, the Contract Pumper reported that for the first time he could pump the holding lagoons without any problems. This resulted in a large savings in time and money to CVFF, combined with the fact that the cone shaped sludge pile in the first lagoon was totally eliminated. AquaClean had removed the sludge deposits in one growing season, while only treating the shallow pits in the barns. Farmer Boy Supply is expanding distribution from PA to NY and OH based on these results.