Passing the Sniff Test

As houses are built closer to dairies, producers are finding innovative ways to be good neighbors

As dairy farmers, Jon Slutsky and his wife, Susan Moore, were used to the odors of their farm. However, after a huge expansion project in 2001, they realized the pungency had risen to a new level when they were in downtown Wellington, Colorado, and could smell their dairy cows from two miles away. La Luna is located 50 feet outside city limits and across the street from a 400-house residential development.

Today, after switching to an effective odor management system and by reaching out to the community, their operation, La Luna Dairy, is considered a model for how a dairy and residential area can co-exist successfully.

Reaching that point, though, took some trial and error. Jon, Susan and their 19-year-old daughter Raisa wanted to be good neighbors to the town of 5,000 residents. The first major step the couple took was one that might seem counterintuitive – they invited the local newspaper to come to the farm to talk about the dairy in an effort to educate the community.

“In the news story, we invited neighbors to call and made ourselves accessible – as opposed to waiting for them to call us after they’d reached the breaking point,” Jon explains. “We put our phone number in the newspaper article. It was a pre-emptive strike.” Two to three weeks after the article ran, the DFA members had received about 20 phone calls. Their neighbors weren’t happy, but they at least knew that Jon and Susan cared.

The search for a solution
The challenges at La Luna started when Jon and Susan increased the number of cows on their 60-acre farm from 500 to 1,500 in a three-week period. “For us, it was like learning to dairy all over again,” Jon says, adding that in less than a month they added 17 employees, 1,000 cows and a new barn – and of course, more manure. “It was like turning a switch,” Jon says. “Our odors were horrific.”

The current lagoon was new, and as it is with new systems, wasn’t operating at full potential. The old lagoon, which was abandoned, was stagnant and not helping the situation, so they drained the lagoon and filled it in. That helped. “So, I think people saw us make an effort,” Jon says.

The calls didn’t stop
“Over the course of a year, lagoons do have a break-in period. But, after nine months, we were still getting some people calling,” Jon admits. “These were some bad, bad days.”

One thing the dairy owners had going for them, though, was their close relationship with the agriculture department at Colorado State University (CSU). Jon, who has a degree in biology, and Susan, who has a degree in animal science, know the importance of staying on the cutting edge of technology.

They’ve cultivated their relationship with CSU and have been fortunate to have been participants in several of the university’s studies on cutting edge technology. The two started looking into a new technology that CSU was studying that aerates lagoons.

They also relied on the advice and experience of their DFA field representative, John Phipps, who gave them some ideas on how to deal with the odors.

Jon and Susan decided that the best option for La Luna Dairy was to build a greenhouse to grow algae and allow the algae to trickle into the lagoon. The algae oxygenates the water.

Large gold fish in the tanks agitate the algae and serve a function that is similar to one served by a canary in a mine. If the gold fish die, it’s an indication the mixture is not at the proper levels.

Before the greenhouse system was put in place, there was zero percent oxygen in the lagoon; it’s been as high as 1 percent since this system was constructed.

However, before Jon and Susan built the greenhouse, they knew there was something very important they needed to do – they needed to get the town of Wellington to sign off on the project. Jon invited the town’s mayor and board members to come with him to visit a hog farm that was using a similar system and didn’t have odor problems.

“They were impressed and they thought it was a good deal,” Jon says. “They didn’t pay for the system, but they gave their blessing and spread the word that we were trying.”

Larry Noel, who’s been mayor of Wellington for five years, agrees. He said he was impressed with the system he saw at the hog farm and impressed that Jon was trying hard to find a way to control the odors.

“Things are a lot better,” Noel says. “You can smell it once in a while, but not that often and not nearly as bad as it used to be. I’m pleased with what he’s doing out there. He’s trying to be a good neighbor and he is a good neighbor.”

Nature also was working in the DFA members’ favor. The lagoon developed a cover of fiber that worked its way up to the top. It was not by design, Jon says, but since it’s working to seal the lagoon, he says he’s not going to mess with it.

Surprisingly, in the last six years, the one group Jon hasn’t had one complaint from is the 400 families across the street in the Buffalo Creek subdivision. Jon thinks the difference is that the families knew they were moving in across from a dairy and accepted the odors that come with it, and many of the new neighbors did not move in until odors had diminished.

It’s all about community
While complaints about odors from the people of Wellington have pretty much subsided, Jon is keeping an eye on a new concern – traffic and the potential for an accident between the farm’s trucks and neighbors’ cars. His driveway and the main driveway into the neighborhood are almost in line with each other and a mere 100 feet apart. “On any given day there are dozens of trucks, not to mention 26 employees who drive cars,” Jon says. “We do have a lot of traffic.”

The family’s concern for their community extends to other areas, too. Jon and Susan are hosts to an annual science class field trip for 120 children. Last Independence Day, they participated in the parade and handed out 1,000 bottles of milk in the little chug size. Jon serves on the Wellington Chamber of Commerce and is the first person in agriculture to be appointed by the governor to serve on the state’s Air Quality Control Commission.

“The bottom line is that we really have become members of the community and we don’t have to duck when we come to town,” Jon points out. “We made ourselves available and we made the improvements.”