Harnessing Cow Power 

Doug and Patricia Scheider’s Scheidairy Farms digeser (Freeport Journal-Standard photo by Bill Gaither)

Thanks to the NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), some local dairy farms are producing a whole lot more than milk these days. That’s why Doug and Patricia Scheider along with Doug and Tom Block of Pearl City, Illinois, recently hosted open houses to show off their methane digester operations that were partially funded by EQIP. Hundreds of people including farmers, natural resource promoters, Federal officials, and interested citizens toured the farms to see first-hand how the two dairy farmers are turning cow manure into electricity. They got an interesting look at the methane-fired generators that get their fuel from  bacteria that break down the manure creating methane that is piped from the digester to a gas-fired generator.

Doug and Patricia Scheider’s 650-head Scheidairy Farms in Buckeye Township that sells some 45,000 pounds of milk each day, also generates enough electricity to provide power for their entire 1,100-acre farm operation that consumes about 140 kilowatts per hour. "It's producing enough electricity to power 117 homes," said NRCS district conservationist Jim Ritterbusch. The family is also working to sell the extra electricity it produces to a regional utility.

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The large box-like digester heats and corkscrews the manure through the structure where bacteria break down the waste to produce methane. “We're picking up where the cow left off," says Melissa Dvorak, marketing manager for GHD Inc., a Wisconsin-based company that specializes in farm-related environmental engineering and produced the digester used by the Scheiders. The excess solids are removed from the manure and used as bacteria-free bedding for livestock and weed-free fertilizer. Use of the digester also reduces the smell associated with handling cow manure. Several times a day, manure is added and digested  by the equipment.  About 7 million gallons of waste and water per year are treated by the equipment.
(story based on a Freeport Journal-Standard article by Diana Thron-Roemer)
Your contact is Paige Buck, NRCS public affairs specialist, at 217-353-6606.