Our dairy cows play a central role in our farm's closed-loop system.

Threemile Canyon Farms dairy operation blends high-technology milk production with careful herd oversight and environmental stewardship to make it a model for sustainable dairy practices.

Our farm's green ethic earned it recognition in 2003 as a "Founder of a New Northwest" by Sustainable Northwest, a prestigious organization that promotes socially responsible business practices.

Our dairy plays a central role in our farm's closed-loop system in which farm wastes are recycled and fed back into the system to produce high-value agricultural products.

How the closed-loop system works

• Our 16,000-cow dairy herd is fed on the leftovers (peels and culled potatoes) from the off-site processing of our potato crop, as well as other feed and rotation crops we raise.
• The 500,000 tons of nutrient-rich manure produced annually is diluted and composted. We apply the compost on our fields to improve the soil's structure and water-retention properties, resulting in healthier, more pest-resistant crops, reduced erosion, and less need for irrigation. Diluted liquid dairy waste is injected into our irrigation system to fertilize crops, allowing us to substantially reduce our use of chemical fertilizers.
• Our supply of dairy manure allows us to operate an extensive compost operation that produces a wide variety of soil amendments and compost mixes for industrial and retail users.
• An on-site digester will produce methane gas from manure to generate green power or fuel.

'Our herd-management practices and environmental controls make this the model for a 21st century dairy.'

- Ron Morgan
Dairy operations general manager

Our best dairy practices

Wastes are flushed from diary barns into lined settling lagoons. The farm complies with a strict, zero-discharge permit.

• BST-free: Threemile Canyon Farms' Holstein cows receive no milk-stimulating hormones to increase production. We converted our Holstein herd to BST-free production in 2004 and completed conversion of the Jersey herd in the first quarter of 2005.
• Buffers: Our 180-acre dairy operation is located in the center of the 93,000-acre farm complex, providing sufficient buffers from neighboring communities.
• Milking: Round-the-clock milking occurs from two, state-of the-art 72-cow carousels (each 8 minutes a cow completes its milking revolution.) We milk 8,500 Jersey and 7,500 Holstein cows.
• Timely delivery: Our farm's own transport system makes milk deliveries every day, ensuring that supplies reach milk customers in a timely manner.
• Vegetarian diet: Our dairy herd is fed a balanced ration of commodities raised on the farm - corn, alfalfa and other feed crops - supplemented with culls, peelings and other leftovers from processing our commercial potato and onion crops. Our cows are fed no animal byproducts.
• No discharges: Our dairy barns are engineered so that moisture cannot penetrate below a depth of two feet, thus protecting ground and surface water resources. We worked cooperatively with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and the Oregon Department of Agriculture to establish a zero-discharge permit, which sets an exacting standard for our operations.
• Waste recycling: Flushable cement alleys and pipes carry liquid and solid wastes to a lined lagoon, where solids and liquids are separated. The liquids are diluted and pumped through the farm's irrigation system onto crops as liquid fertilizer, allowing us to greatly reduce our use of chemical fertilizers. The solids are composted and then applied to crops, or sold as soil amendments.
• Herd oversight: We raise our own replacement dairy cows in a 4,000-calf nursery and a 21,000- head heifer facility, eventually giving us 25,000 replacement milkers. Every cow is tagged and tracked through our computerized database. Our farm database contains detailed records on each of the 41,000 animals on the farm. We have birth-to-death oversight of every cow in our herd, an increasingly important consideration in light of the U.S. appearance of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, commonly known as mad cow disease).

We depend on supervisors like Lawrence Nyattheny, who oversees the farm's 4,000-calf nursery.

Healthy cows: Getting it right from the start

Lawrence Nyattheny oversees the farm's 4,000-calf nursery. He and the 16 workers he supervises keep detailed, computerized records on every calf, monitoring hygiene, vaccinations and feeding regimens. "We have to be very proactive," says Nyattheny, who was trained as a farm veterinarian in his native Kenya. "We want to keep our calves healthy by anticipating and heading off problems." The nursery begins the extensive, birth-to-death oversight the farm practices on its dairy herd.