GEDDES, N.Y. — When you think about The Great New York State Fair, you think about food, rides and animals of all sizes. But do you think about cleaning up after those animals?
You may be used to signature smell of sausages at the fair but there’s another smell that comes with. That smell comes from the cattle barn. Farmers dispose of the animal waste in a pit and worked take it from there.
Co-Owner of Ripley Farms Shari Ripley said they want to keep the cows as clean as possible.
“We don’t want anything in the straw that is going to have to make us to take them to the wash rack again,” she said.
She further described, “We will just wheel it out in wheel barrels. There is a pit right outside the barn here where we will dump it all. Then they’ll come in a couple times a week with a big loader and load it into trucks and take it out. So, the State Fair takes it out.”
You may be wondering, where does all of it go next?
Dairy Cow Superintendent Charlie Luchsinger said it goes to be composted.
He described, “The manure here, sometimes there can be some trash in it just from people throwing things in the pack or being spread on fields that may have a little debris in it.”
The amount of manure that the cattle building loads in a single day is a dump truck’s worth. Sometimes two.
Still, Luchsinger noted that no matter how much is hauled away, manure is beneficial for crop growth.
“In our own farm, we spread manure on any ground that we are going to grow corn on, ” he said. “Manure is perfect fertilizer for corn. It cuts down on the fertilizer we need to buy and cuts down the runoff of artificial fertilizers.”
For all coverage of the Great New York State Fair, follow this link. You can also check out the Great New York State Fair playlist on the CNY Central YouTube channel.