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Twin Birch Dairy, Skaneateles, N.Y. - 2020 Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy Sustainability Award Winner
Nestled among million-dollar lakefront homes and between two lakes that supply drinking water to 400,000 people sits Twin Birch Dairy. Inspired by innovation and collaboration, Dirk Young has learned how to succeed in the dairy business while remaining a good neighbor.
For example, Young partnered with an environmental group to evaluate his farm’s impact on a local stream, demonstrating large dairy operations and environmental protection can be compatible. The findings? Water quality immediately downstream of his dairy was generally the same, if not slightly better than, upstream water quality.
Young relies on a combination of practices to maximize his operation’s resources. He built remote manure storage in 1999 and 2014. The storage site is 7,500' from his barn.
The operation added an anaerobic digester in 2003 and then upgraded in 2012 with biogas technology. It powers all the barns, houses and satellite facilities at Twin Birch and generates 225 kw of electricity per hour, or enough to power 170 homes for a day. The digester saves about $130,000 annually in electricity and $10,000 annually in water heating costs. Revenue from the sale of separated solids helps offset the capital cost of the digester.
Separated digester solids provide cow bedding, and liquids are transported to the storage site via an underground pipeline. Drag hoses spread liquid manure over 2,700 acres. “We have no heavy equipment on the roads. It’s very efficient, and our neighbors don’t smell it when we’re spreading,” Young says.
He credits his manure management system and application timing practices with saving him $180,000 per year in fertilizer costs for corn alone.
Following a 2007 manure spill, Young collaborated with the County SWCD and state department of environmental conservation to develop standard operating procedures to manage any future emergency on the farm.
On his crop ground, Young practices nutrient management, precision-feeding, no-till and strip cropping. He plants cover crops on nearly all of his acreage, has installed a silage leachate collection and treatment system and has branched into yield monitoring and narrow-row crops for forages.
