Waste management strategies for dairy farms of varying capacities

Dairy cattle farms must plan effectively for waste management due to the high volume of manure produced by the animals they keep. A well-designed waste management plan not only creates a healthy environment for all stakeholders but also generates an additional source of income to support the dairy farm’s sustainability. In this study, a general waste management plan was developed for 24 dairy cattle farms, and various scenarios (plant production, composting, biogas) that could be used as alternatives for the reuse of manure were comparatively evaluated. Calculations show that, if dairy cattle farms use manure for plant production in the first scenario, 38 tons of manure per hectare would need to be applied in the Bursa region, and across the 24 farms evaluated, the total manure available could be applied to an average of 21.45 hectares of land. In the second scenario, the total compost production across all dairy cattle farms was calculated to be 425.74 m3 per day. Approximately 80% of this amount belongs to dairy farms with large capacity (6 dairy farms). In the third scenario, biogas calculations indicate that the total manure from all dairy farms can generate 1,830,853 kWh of electricity annually. 70% of this figure (1,261,835.49 kWh) is obtained from large-capacity dairy farms, and 4% (67,663.61 kWh) is obtained from small-capacity dairy farms. When all the scenarios examined in the study were analyzed economically, the compost scenario yielded the highest economic gain and the shortest payback period across all groups. On small-capacity dairy farms, the annual profit is 104,758 TL, and the payback period is 8.49 years. Large-capacity dairy cattle farms, on the other hand, have the shortest payback period with an annual profit of 2,271,812 TL and a payback period of 5.24 years.