Everything’s running smoothly on Rice Crest Farms
WENDY WEHR
CHAMBERSBURG - Did you
spend your morning fixing that
broken-down gutter cleaner?
Your lunch hour trying to corral
that sick cow for the vet?
Your afternoon struggling with
that heifer who calved in the tree
stall pen?
Your suppertime hurrying
through the milking, skimping as
you wash off the cows because
you’re working by yourself tonight,
even though it’s a two-person job?
And your evening worrying
about your cash flow problems and
wondering why you never gpt to
any of those jobs on your “to do”
list today?
Think about it a minute. Are you
running your dairy farm, or is your
dairy farm running you?
Fred and Dale Rice, operators of
Rice Crest Farms, Chambersburg,
have taken this question to heart.
As they’ve established their
Franklin County dairy operation
over the past five years, they’ve
made sure that their farm isn’t
running them ragged.
Since they formed their part
nership in 1980, the Rice brothers
have built up a 150-cow registered
Holstein herd.
And as they built up that herd
they literally did a lot of building,
constructing dairy facilities that
could give them what they wanted
smoother management and
maintenance, profitability with
low capital investment and free
time they could count on.
Three of their building projects
in particular the gravity manure
system, a matemity/sick cow
area, and a drive-through feeding
building have pleased Fred and
Dale and have also received a lot of
favorable attention from fellow
dairy farmers and Extension
personnel.
“Dale and Fred Rice are top
notch fellows who plan everything
out,” says Franklin County Ex
tension agent Philip Wagner. During the winter and spring of
“They gather a lot of advice and I 9B *, the Rice brothers gutted the
information before making a lower part of the bank bam and
move, and they cost it out built five box stalls. They both say
beforehand, too. ” the pens are a big benefit.
The Rice brothers are much “If a cow gets a sore foot, we can
more modest about their approach got her off the concrete,” com
to dairying, but they do agree that "moots Fred. “Or if a cow goes off
they have created an operation food or milk, she gets pulled in
that works for them. “It’s here so we can watch her a little
definitely an efficient operation,” closer.”
admits Fred “We don’t spend all Cows and heifers are also put
our time working.” into the pens before they’re ready
to calve, although in the sum
mertime they’re allowed to
freshen out in pasture.
Fred and Dale say the maternity
pens and the other building
projects on the farm were made
possible in part by a seven-year
farm employee who was a terrific
welder, mechanic and carpenter.
Using their ideas, he built all the
Self-locking stanchions
The drive-through feeding
building with 104 self-locking
stanchions was one of the first
major building projects that the
two undertook.
In this feeding building, the high
cows in the herd are top-dressed in
addition to their total mixed ration,
'fvmM.
The gravity manure system and the trench silos on Rice Crest Farms were low
investment projects that are giving Fred and Dale Rice high returns with better
management and timesavings.
so the drive-through feeding saves
time and labor.
And the self-locking stanchions
and gate design enable one person
to corral a group of cows, sim
plifying reproductive and
veterinary work on the herd.
Every morning, for instance, Dale
goes through and chalks tailheads
for heat detection.
The Rice brothers included a
sprinkling system in the building,
too. Water from small spray
nozzles keeps the cows cool. “It
helps keep the cows eating over the
hot spells,” says Fred.
Before completing their design,
though, they did look at a lot of
other buildings, say Fred and
Dale. And they talked over options
with an Agway engineer and used a
lot of Extension information, both
from the local county agent and
from the Penn State ag engineers.
“I’m on a campaign to have
farmers thinking of restraint and
handling facilities as something
that will help them unprove
productivity without increasing
their costs,” says Penn State
Extension ag engineer Bob
Graves. Graves has worked often
with the Rice brothers and uses
their feeding area as an example of
“how to do it right.”
If you want a 14,000-pound cow to
become an 18,000-pound producer,
says Graves, you’ve got to take
more care with maternity and
treatment.
Graves also likes the mater
mty/treatment area that Fred and
Dale have created in the bottom of
the old bank barn on the farm.
“They started with some pretty
old facilities there,” says Graves.
“What they’ve done is a good
example of modifying an existing
facility and making additions that
will give them immediate
payback.”
Maternity pens
Rice Crest Farms is a successful dairy venture in the midst of Franl
country.
gates and headlocks in the
maternity area.
Gravity-flow manure handling
Another low-investment, high
return project for the Rice
brothers was the installation of a
gravity-flow manure system. This,
like many of the other additions to
the dairy operation, was un
dertaken with the help and advice
of a variety of people.
Fred says they looked at a step
gutter system on a Lancaster
County farm for some ideas, had
the local conservation district
design the manure storage, and
gathered information about
gravity manure handling from
Graves at t*enn State as they at
tempted to devise something to
meet their needs in 1983.
“We wanted to design a system
for all the buildings,” says Fred,
but they didn’t want to spend the
money on or put up with the
mechanical breakdowns of ram
pumps.
In their system the manure flows
by gravity through long, level,
four-foot-wide by four-foot-deep
gutters. At points along the system
an 8-inch block, or step, holds back
the liquids and pushes out the
solids.
“The level floor is hard for
people to understand,” says Fred,
but the system does work. From
the zero-slope channel, the manure
flows into the storage, at a point six
feet from the bottom.
The manure pit has a concrete
bottom and sides and holds about
half a million gallons, or five
month’s storage for the Rice Crest
operation.
"Their manure system is an
innovative application of the
seam** 1
•<** i
a**
gravity-flow channel concept,”
says Graves. Because the
buildings on the farm are on such a
level site, he explains, their only
other alternative would have been
a mechanical system, with all the
other problems associated with it.
He adds that they took a little bit
of risk in putting it m, because of
cold weather and freezing, but the
Rice brothers say it’s worked well
so far.
“If we have an extended period
of cold weather, say, below 10
degrees for four or five days, we
have a little problem with
discharge into the storage,”
comments Fred. But as a general
rule, they never have to use a
conventional spreader more than
12 or 15 days out of the year.
Fred and Dale agree that the
manure system has made life a
The bottom of the old bank barn on the farm was converted
into maternity-sick cow box stalls.
Dale, left, and Fred Rice designed this building with herd
management in mind. Drive-through feeding saves labor and
time, and the self-locking headgates aid in reproductive and
-health work. ‘
in County dairy
whole lot easier, freeing up some of
their time. And with only $5,000
spent on the step gutter system and
$lO,OOO on the manure storage,
they’re well-satisfied.
That’s a pretty low investment,
they say, for something that offers
low maintenance as well.
“One of their mam goals is to
keep things as labor efficient as
possible and not have money tied
up in machinery,” Franklin
County Agent Philip Wagner says
about the Ride Crest operation.
And nearly every aspect of their
operation does seem to conform to
this philosophy. Their decision to
utilize trench silos, which offered
them minimal investment for
maximum storage capacity, as
well as avoiding the hassles of silo-
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