Harvey Wenger hopes
BY JACK HUBLEY
NEW HOLLAND - Most
farmers are aware of the virtues of
dried poultry waste as fertilizer
and livestock feed. But few realize
that some of the very first DPW
produced in the United States was
eaten by a Michigan State college
professor.
The year was 1965 when Harvej
Wenger, a former New Holland
resident, first hit upon the idea of
recycling poultry manure.
Working for a local poultry
equipment distributor, Wenger
met a salesman who had just
returned from Japan with a
sample of dried poultry manure
Wenger was so impressed with
the product that he took it to
Michigan State professor Dr.
Howard Zindel for analysis. When
he asked Zindel if he could identify
the product, Zindel took a sample
from the coffee can, then tasted it.
I laughed and told him, you've
just tasted dried chicken manure,'
' recalls Wenger.
The intriguing thing about
poultry, according to Wenger, is
the way in which the birds process
food Poultry feed enters the bird
at 16 or 17 percent protein and
comes out at 20 percent 14 hours
later You feed three tons of feed
and get one ton of dried product,
says Wenger, noting that, unlike
chemical fertilizers, DPW actually
feeds the microscopic life in soil
when used as fertilizer
But soil flora aren't the onlj
organisms that can take ad
vantage of DPW's nutrients, says
Penn State Extension poultrj
specialist Forest Muir Because
DPW is high in nitrogen it can be
an important source of protein m
livestock feed. Muir explains that
organisms found in the rumen of
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cattle have the ability to convert
this nitrogen to protein
Impressed with the potential of
DPW as a fertilizer and feed.
Wenger enlisted the aid of a
Michigan-based furnace company
in designing his first unit. At
present, Wenger Dryers are being
built by a local equipment
manufacturer located in New
Holland.
The hangup that a lot of people
have is that they associate chicken
manure with a rotten, stinking
mess," says Wenger, pointing out
that when dried right from the hen,
DPW actually smells similar to
feed.
Adapted for caged layers, the
dryers are built to handle the
output from a standard 50,000-bird
house. An auger moves the manure
automatically to the dryer where it
piles up in a hopper and is fed into
the dryer. Dried at 600 degrees F,
and pulverized by a hammer mill,
the manure emerges at 10 to 12-
percent moisture
The cost of drying a ton of manure
runs about $25 to $3O, or up to about
$4O for very wet manure.
What makes Wenger Meal"
different from other dried
manures’’ Wenger feels that his
product is unique for a number of
reasons First, the product is dried
fresh, within 48 hours of leaving
the hen It's also free of pesticide
residues
But what realh sets his product
apart, Wenger says, is its fine,
granular texture You can dram
30 tons out of a two-inch hole," says
Wenger, noting that his DPW will
also flow easilj through a lawn
spreader Its texture makes the
product adaptable for many uses,
including spreading over
vegetable crops, on hay crops
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to clean up manure’s reputation
before successive cuttings or on
pasture land while cattle are
feeding
One customer who is impressed
with the performance of his
Wenger Dryer is Bill Gerhart of
Gilbertsville. Gerhart, who
maintains 70 acres of cropland,
uses some of the manure from his
46,000 layers in wet form, and dries
about a ton of manure a day
You can use it in your corn
planter box just like fertilizer,”
Gilbert says, noting that the
product flows just like powder.
We don't buy a pound of fertilizer
here anymore.”
Gerhart sells his surplus to local
farmers and says he has no
problem marketing his excess
production These fellas swear b>
it," he says.
But despite the product’s vir
tues, the market for DPW has
increased little in the past decade,
says John Noll, vice president of
A H. Hoffman, Inc ,
Hoffman buys the dried product
and mixes it with turkey manure to
produce a product the compam
calls Hoffman's Super Manure
The manure is then retailed as
fertilizer in packages ranging from
five to 40 pounds
Noll points out that cow manure
will putsch poultn manure am
daj of the week, because of it s
rich, dark coloi From an analysis
standpoint, though, the firm s
Super Manure is far superior to
tow manure, says Noll One other
advantage of the dried poultn
manure is that the drying process
kills weed seeds, says Noll
But the main reason for DPW s
slow acceptance has been the cost
of fueling the dryers, says Forest
Muir. One source of fuel that needs
to be explored is broiler manure,
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he says. With its high wood
shavings content, incinerated
broiler waste could prove to be a
low-cost alternate e to fossil fuels
Wenger himself remains a
staunch proponent of DPW as both
ti .ne texture of his
Wenger Meal. The finely ground dried poultry manure is
produced in dryers like the one in the background.
Twi."
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fertilizer and feed And though he
not optimistic about increasmi
consumption among colleg'
professors, he is confident tha
more markets for his Wenger Mea
he just around the corner
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