Nutrient Management …Environmental Info

Shenandoah Dairy is a benefit to our community and our environment.  We benefit our community by providing food and fiber.  We are part of the food supply for our community, county, and state.  Without a local supply of food, the community becomes dependant on imported food supplies…dependant on others for the very basics in life.

Because the food supply is essential to our basic needs, it is also essential that those needs be provided in a means that is safe and beneficial to all parties, including the environment. 

The basic management strategy in managing the nutrients:

• Cows consume nutrients as all kinds of feedstuff including by-products such as: citrus peels, cottonseed, molasses, spent grains from distilleries, breweries, and ethanol plants, all kinds of grasses and forages.  Cows convert these nutrients to milk.  So part of our nutrients leave the farm as milk.

• Cows also excrete nutrients in the form of manure and urine.  The nutrients in these waste products are very beneficial utilized as fertilizer for plants.

• Plants need nutrients or fertilizer.  We supply the needed nutrients to the plants.

• The plants are grown and harvested, then stored on the farm and fed back to the cows.  The cows produce milk and the cycle repeats.

• Shenandoah Dairy must account for all the nutrients produced and consumed on the farm.

• It’s called a nutrient balance.  We account for what happens with these nutrients.  We only apply to the crops or plants what they need and harvest these nutrients as crops for the cows. 

• Shenandoah Dairy does not pollute anything.  Quite the opposite.  The nutrients we are using replace commercial fertilizer.  The organic fertilizer the cows produce is more readily usable by the crops and improves soil fertility.

• Shenandoah Dairy simply provides its own organic fertilizer via the cows and reduces the need for purchases of commercial fertilizer.