Duane Stoltzfus Talks About Managing Forages and Feed Inventories, Digesters, and Transition

Center for Dairy Excellence

April 17, 2024 DairyBusiness News Team DP DHIA, News 0
With spring planting already ramping up, most dairy farmers are starting to turn their thoughts to how they can get the best forages possible for their herd in the coming year. In this episode of Cow-Side Conversations, Duane Stoltzfus of Pennwood Farms LLC in Somerset County, PA shares a glimpse inside their nutrition program, the feeding decisions they make for their 600-cow herd as they crop 2,000 acres, and the return on investment they’ve seen after implementing a feed watch technology system. He also describes the ups and downs of having a digester on their farm and explains the lengthy, but fulfilling, journey their family took to develop a transition plan that provides opportunities for the next generation.

Listen to the podcast episode.
Podcast Highlights: Feed watch technology system: “Essentially, it gave us a really accurate number of what the cows are actually eating. The nutritionist and I can use that data to generate income over feed cost, or any numbers you want from there. The software program has certainly helped with that. We weren’t as far off as we thought we might have been.”

Digesters: “The digester provides enough electricity for the farm, and we market some of the electricity. One of the biggest benefits is, we try to use as much of the heat off the engine as we can. We have a large machine shop that’s heated solely by that, it heats some of my house, and it heats some hot water in the parlor. They also say there’s an odor reduction. We didn’t get many complaints beforehand, but I will say, the first year we started hauling manure after we had the digester up and running, one of the ladies in town stopped the truck and asked what we were hauling. She said, “It doesn’t smell like manure.” This was someone who hadn’t been told it would be reduced in odor, so I think that it is definitely a benefit.”

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