What's All the STINK About at the Manure Expo 2014!

Breaking news!!!

This year’s annual Manure Expo is in Springfield, Missouri! That’s right, for all you manure industry enthusiasts out there, this expo combines not one, not two, but THREE attractions into a single national event: an industry trade show, manure technology demonstrations, and educational events.

Veterinarians are....uhhh...ummmm.... sort of manure experts. If you give them a sample of manure from a clinically healthy domesticated farm animal, they can usually identify said animal based on the appearance of its manure alone. And that, my friends, is a skill one should put on one’s resume. 

Here's an interesting factoid....swine feces can almost quite literally come in a rainbow of colors, and sometimes the color of the manure gives you the diagnosis. Here's another life altering bit of information....caterpillar excrement is called frass. This is the only place one could ever include a facts like these. Knowledge is power. Consider yourself educated!  

This year’s theme at the expo is: “valuing manure and the environment.” According to the website, this is “the only trade show on the continent to focus specifically on manure management and application issues.”

Strange as it may seem, manure really is big business. And actually, if you crunch some numbers maybe it’s not that strange at all. Consider the following data from the EPA: they estimate that an average 200 cow herd produces just over 24,000 pounds of urine and feces per day. If you’re raising beef cattle on an open range, this isn’t much of an issue, as the animal waste is spread naturally over the ground. But if you’re running a dairy, for example, and the cows are housed mostly in large barns between milkings, that twelve tons of waste has to go somewhere.That “somewhere” is where manure management kicks in. Many dairies have large pits called “lagoons” which are holding tanks for animal waste. Word has it that many a farmer has fallen into one over the years. Talk about your worst nightmare. These lagoons are emptied periodically, with the waste spread over crops as fertilizer.

So, mark your calendars for July 8 and 9 for a family vacation to Springfield, Missouri.  Who wouldn't want a free hat that said “MANURE MGT”?