The Rural Voice, 2000-04, Page 38New production concepts, new
marketing arrangements and
new buildings have
revolutionized the pork industry in
the past decade but those the new
buildings have also brought farmers
into conflict with their neighbours.
The next generation of pork barns,
however, might change all that.
Those dealing with the public's
concernp over environmental dangers
posed by huge volumes of
liquid manure and
complaints over the nuisance
of the smell from large hog
facilities feel there may be
answers on the way. A new
barn design could turn liquid
manure into solid, composed
manure while biofilters
could scrub the stink out of
air exhausted from under -
barn liquid manure storage
tanks.
The barns, patented under
the name High -Rise Hog
Facilities, already exist in
Ohio. Milton Dietrich, chief
building official for the
southern Huron townships of
Hay and Stephen, was part
of a trip to see one of the
barns.
"It takes quite a bit to
impress me," he says. "I was
impressed!"
Wayne Caldwell, senior
planner with the Huron
County Planning and Development
Department has been involved for
several years in trying to mediate
between the concerns of the public
and the needs of the farming
community. He helped in developing
a model bylaw used by Huron
County's townships in requiring
nutrient management plans before
new large livestock operations can be
built. He's excited about the
possibilities of barns that turn liquid
manure into solid manure. Take the
liquid out of liquid manure, he says,
and you get rid of about 85 per cent
of the problems.
The beauty of the idea behind
High -Rise Hog Facilities is that it
allows farmers to have the labour-
saving convenience of a slatted -floor
liquid operation with the lower
volumes of solid manure — and the
bonus is a reduction in smell.
Dietrich was amazed at how
irt.104!it
0
Ohio area has brokers buy, sell and
transport manure.
The pair wanted to•design a
system that would create dry,
transportable hog manure. Analysis
already showed that hog manure is a
better crop nutrient than poultry
manure.
The concept starts with building a
ground -level manure pit. Built into
the concrete floor of the pit are
plastic pipes with 3/8 -
inch holes. Four fans are
connected to the'pipes to
blow air through them.
A layer of some
absorbent carbon -based
material such as wood
shavings or corn stover
is spread across the floor
of the pit. When the barn
is filled with pigs, the
manure drops down
through the slatted floor
and the moisture is
absorbed by the bulking
material. The air being
pumped through the
floor provides oxygen
for composting and also
helps dry the absorbent
material. There are also
fans blowing across the
top of the manure
mixture.
Menke explains that
the whole object is to
dry the manure and he
hopes to be able to get the moisture
content down to between 30 and 60
per cent. The bonus is that by not
allowing the manure to decompose in
a wet state, there's less odour. The
composting process also ties up the
nitrogen in a more stable form.
If there is any excess water, such
as water used for washing down
pens, it's collected by a gutter down
the centre of the pit and is pumped to
outside storage tanks.
The manure is removed through
end doors in the pit using a ski -steer
loader. The volume of manure is
much lower than if the liquid was
still present.
According to the company's
description, you can walk through the
High -Rise barn and you won't notice
much difference than an ordinary hog
barn, except you'll be nine feet above
ground level. The slatted floor and
the feed and watering systems will be
GOING UP?
A new Ohio design for hog barns could put pigs
up in the air, and bring the issue of waste
down to solid ground
34 THE RURAL VOICE
By Keith Roulston
simple it was. It seemed too simple to
work, he said, but it did.
The concept for the new design
came from Tom Menke's experience
with the poultry industry. Menke, an
agronomic and environmental
consultant from Greenville, Ohio is a
partner in Four M Farm Inc. He and
partner Bob Makin,. a livestock
consultant based in Indiana, started
talking several years about ways to
deal with the odour and handling
problems with hog manure. Both had
experience in dealing with poultry
layer barns where manure from cages
drops down to a ground level pit
below where it remains dry. The
poultry manure can be dried to 15 per
cent moisture and can be transported
long distances so a farmer doesn't
have to have a large landbase
himself. In fact one of Menke's
customers holds an annual auction to
sell his poultry manure. The western