When we arrived at the Roche Farm feedlot we were met by Kevin Roche. He farms with his 2 brothers and their father is around to help out as well. There are also two full time and one part time employees. The feedlot houses 1300 head of steers at a time. The Roche family also farm 4900 acres of soybeans, corn and wheat. Twenty-five percent of crops grown go back into the feedlot to for feed.
Holstein steers are brought in at 380-420lbs. The farm has holstein steers because of the large supply of them in Wisconsin. Steers leave the farm around 1310 lbs. All steers are castrated before arrival. Most of the steers are owned by the Roches, but some are raised on contract. Rations consist of corn silage, hay, modified wet distillers grain, ethanol by-product that is a corn syrupy texture and wet gluten. The animals are feed a TMR mix twice a day. Pens of 120 are shipped about once a month.
One barn is a manure pack and another has cement or rubber slats. They find that rubber slats improve performance and more animals can also be in pens with rubber slats. When they add bedding to pens, they also add waste drywall which they find eliminates the ammonia in the manure and helps it compost better. They also use some corn stalk bedding, and find it absorbs about 75% more liquids. To deal with their dead stock, they have it picked up, which costs about $15.00 a head. Kevin was surprised to hear that we will compost deadstock as large as steers in Ontario.
The farm started to compost all its manure about 3 years ago. Once a pile is started it needs to be turned 2-3 times a week. Piles are monitored and they like to see a temperature of about 130 oF. If the temperature is higher, the pile needs to be turned more frequently. After 9 weeks the compost is near ready, and may need to be turned about once a week. All the finished compost is spread on their fields in the fall. Composting is not very common in Wisconsin.
All their grain corn goes for ethanol production. The ethanol plant that their corn is shipped to is community owned. They have their own storage and ship corn to the plant year round.
Karen Booker
