Used wallboard dries dairy cow bedding

Originally published in the January 22, 2010, print edition.

By Dick Hagen The Land Staff Writer

The Land — Dairy barns and cornfields can benefit from tons and tons of scrap drywall that ultimately ends up in landfills. When processed into recycled gypsum, the list of potential uses of the product is rather amazing. Travis and Ally Leonard, young entrepreneurs at Princeton, have launched Innovative Gypsum Products to take advantage of those uses.

“We recycle new construction drywall,” said Travis, 34, interviewed at the recent Midwest Dairy Expo in St. Cloud. This means grinding up the material, separating out the paper portion from the gypsum used to make the drywall. Gypsum is calcium sulfate mined from vast reserves in the United States and is one of the most widely used minerals in the country, he said.

They work only with new construction drywall scraps because the Environmental Protection Agency closely regulates the standards of new drywall. Old material often has a variety of ingredients, including various paints of unknown origin.

Though only six months into the business, IGP has already discovered a growing market within the dairy industry, where the product is used with bedding. Swine and poultry producers are also discovering interesting uses for this processed gypsum.

“The livestock people are adding this product to their regular bedding, be that saw dust, chopped straw or chopped corn stalks,” Leonard said, adding there also seems to be growing interest in using the product as a soil amendment. That would be because the product contains 20 to 22 percent calcium and 14 to 17 percent sulfur. Unlike limestone, this product does not alter soil pH.

Used with bedding, the gypsum chemically ties up ammonia thereby drastically reducing odors. Unlike other manure amendments, the gypsum stays in suspension in slurry tanks and pits so you aren’t compromising manure pumps.

Research conducted by the University of Wisconsin, Madison, determined that recycled gypsum can benefit dairy and livestock farmers in a variety of ways, including:

• Improved air quality;
• Improved milk quality when used in bedding;
• Improved soil nitrogen content;
• Improved health of calves and baby pigs; and
• Dramatic reduction in fly populations.

The Leonards access most of their discarded drywall materials from the construction industry in the Twin Cities. Travis pointed out that gypsum is not new to the agricultural market but providing this product from so-called waste material is indeed new. Each year over three-quarter million tons of construction debris is produced in the Metro area with nearly 15 percent of that being gypsum drywall. That equates to more than 110,000 tons of useable resource going into local landfills.

He comes well-equipped to develop their new business. “I had the prestigious title of ‘drywall scrapper’ when working in the construction world,” Leonard said, relating that it was his chore to scrap out the drywall from the other debris. Thinking about what he could do with this product other than landfilling it is what led to the development of IGP. “It is expensive to dump this stuff in a landfill so after some research, some help from a couple of fantastic people, and maybe even some dumb luck here we are.”

Delivered in bulk, current prices are $40 per ton plus adjustments for mileage from their Princeton location.

Some surprising benefits of the use of drywall are much drier bedding because the product absorbs moisture, and bacteria and fly larvae are kept in check because the calcium/sulfur content doesn’t support bacteria. “My message to the dairy farmer is that this product used with their bedding results in happier, healthier cows in a drier environment which ultimately means better production and longer herd life,” Leonard said.

As odors continue to be an environmental issue, it is worth noting that this gypsum product absorbs free nitrogen in the air (the ammonia), meaning you have a cleaner smelling barn. You also gain the benefit of harnessing that nitrogen into your bedding for later distribution on your fields. Paper separated from the drywall is also sold as bedding.

As neophytes in the farm marketing business, Leonard admitted that so far his advertising has mostly been word-of-mouth from satisfied customers. He tells farmers: “Look, this isn’t snake oil. It works.” Their primary mentor is a Wisconsin marketer Jim Kramer, who has been producing and selling the product for 15 years without a recall.

A satisfied new customer is 80-cow dairy farmer Lonnie Grener of Foley, who spreads the gypsum into each free stall every day.

“I like the product very much,” said Grener. “We like the environment it provides for our cows in our free-stall barn ... it keeps the sawdust bedding much drier ... my cow’s hooves stay drier so I don’t have nearly the hoof problems. This gypsum just sucks the moisture away from that hoof. Plus it extends the life of the bedding by at least 50 percent. And when we haul this bedding to the field, I’ll have a better fertilizer.”

For more information, call (763) 238-6677.