A36—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, August 27,1983 Mike Pfautz to be ‘Future Farmer’ in Japan BY DICK ANGLESTEIN course, there’s the normal STEVENS It’s been a hectic, duties around home associated jam-packed week for Mike Pfautz, wito the family's farm market member of the Cloister FFA at f ° r fmal Ephrata and past Eastern county 4-H hog roundup, too. Regional Vice President of the Pa. there s one more thing. On FFA Association Tuesday, he takes off and heads for He wound up his job as a Ja P«n for a three and onehalf salesman for Gehman Feed. monol sta y *»th Japanese farm Denver families. He found out he finished as Mike, one of the best-traveled of Eastern Regional proficiency the 1962-83 state officers on the runnerup in ag sales and service. banquet circuit, thus becomes one Penn State profs applying know-how to round bales BY HUSH WILLIAMS phase for application into round STRASBURG - Two Penn State bales. agricultural engineering The purpose of applying professors have developed and are anhydrous ammonia is to increase now testing an applicator for in- the protein content of the bale and fusing anhydrous ammonia into to reduce spoilage during storage, round bales. Associate professors, said Kjelgaard. The two professors William L. Kjelgaard and Paul M. have gotten a patent on the con- Anderson worked together to verier portion of the applicator, develop a cold flow converter that Kjelgaard explains, "Anhydrous facilitates the conversion of liquid ammonia has been used for anhydrous ammonia into a vapor several years now as preservative The applicator mounted on the bed of a half ton pick-up is backed into a round bale for applying the anhydrous am monia, used as a preservative and to increase the amount of protein contained in the bale. Studying map of Japan. of 11 FFA’ers in a Work Ex perience Abroad program funded under a grant from the President’s Youth Exchange Initiative of the U.S. Information Agency. Actually, Pennsylvania has two participants in the program and both are from last year’s state officer roster - one from the east and one from the west. While Mike was the Eastern Regional Vice President, his counterpart in the west, Amy Winklosky, of the Derry Chapter in Westmoreland County, has also been selected for the program. As Mike poured over maps, tour guides, instructions and other material for the trip, his en thusiasm about the visit bubbled through. "It’s been pretty hectic getting ready, but 1 can’t wait to get started,” he said. He’s been making such a detailed study of the material that he’s already found a restaurant in Tokyo that specializes in Penn sylvania-Dutch pies. A slice of Japanese shoo-fly should do wonders for any hunger pangs for home. On Tuesday, he Dies to San Francisco on the first leg of the trip to Japan. He’s bound for Kanagawa, located along the coast southwest of Tokyo. The first 12 days will be spent in a language familiarization course. During his stay one day a week will be spent in classrooms at the Hiratsuka Agricultural High School in Kanagawa. He’ll live and work with host Japanese farm families. There’ll be a midpoint evaluation of the program with the embassy attache at the National FFA Center in Japan. And, he’ll also attend the National Con vention of the Future Farmers of Japan. After additional stay with a Japanese farm family, Mike will wind up the trip with a few days in Hong Kong from Dec. 10 to 13. and to increase the protein content of silage. We are applying the same principles to round bales with this new system.” At present Kjelgaard and An derson are conducting research at Penn State and in the field to substantiate the effects of varying amounts of anhydrous ammonia applied to round bales. Three farms, one in the western part of the state, one in the central section, and the Ken Groff farm in Strasburg, Lancaster County are cooperating with the Penn State ag engineers. The three farmers who use round bales in their feeding programs, agreed to have some bales treated with anhyrous ammonia, and will make ob servations as the forage is fed out, on the quality of hay, its palatabiltiy, and refusal rate, to assist Kjelgaard and Anderson in their field tests. In research conducted at Penn State the forage, is analyzed by infrared analysis to evaluate the nutrient quality of the forage. At file farm of Ken Groff, Kjelgaard, treated round bales of hay, haylage, and com fodder with two levels of anhydrous ammonia. The 800 to 1000 pound bales were broken down into three treatment groups. One treatment received 9 pounds of anhydrous ammonia per bale, another 4.5 pounds per bale, and a control group of the same forage received no treatment. The bales were tagged with the type of treatment applied to it. When Ken Groff feeds the bale to his dairy herd he will make visual observations and record them for (Turn to Page A3B) In front of family's farm market. During his Japanese stay, Mike ~![ e ,|[ nai fl in *L. a 8 will be taking a lot of slides and ££A er ‘ Ai>d.he 11 be attending the will be putting together a program. J convention. So. area FFA chapters and other And. then there’s the 1064 groups looking for an ac- National Convention in Kansas complished speaker can call on ,y . him beginning next year. M* 6 P 1 ®" 8 a ran at state en' ‘Til be missing the Ephrata Fair Jorsement to try for national of and the National Convention this year,” Mike lamented a bit. Us not only a busy week for ‘.‘But this is a real unique op- , ... portunity.” It looks like a busy year or more But Mike has a couple more eomin^up- Prof. Kjelgaard trips the valve on the cold flow applicator, demonstrating how the liquid and vapor phase of the anhydrous ammonia flows by gravity into the round bale. Cooperating dairyman, Ken Groff, in the back, looks on as Professor Kjelgaard and his research assistant, seal a plastic bag around this bale after application of anhydrous ammonia.
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