By MICHELE F. MIHALJEVICH
Indiana Correspondent

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — A recent count of livestock in the St. Marys and St. Joseph rivers watersheds is another tool to improve the environment and water quality in those areas, officials said.

“This is just one more vital piece of information for identifying concerns in the watersheds,” said Greg Lake, director of Allen County’s Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD). “Not only did this give us information on the number of animals, but also looked at livestock that might have direct stream access. We were especially concerned about those sites.”

The inventory was done in the three-state St. Joseph River watershed, which covers 694,000 acres in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan, and in the Indiana portion of the St. Marys River watershed, which covers 243,000 acres in Indiana.

The top four types of livestock in the two watersheds were pigs (101,213), chickens (35,730), ducks (30,426) and beef cattle (15,249), said Clint A. Nester, St. Marys Watershed project manager.

“It was a learning experience to find out what’s out there,” Nester said. “It’s not watched very closely and we wanted to get a feel for what’s there. It’s just another piece of the puzzle.”

The St. Joseph River portion of the count was funded by the Ohio Depart-ment of Natural Resources (ODNR) through a grant from the Cooperative Conservation Partnership Initiative, Nester said. ODNR contracted with the St. Joseph River Watershed Initiative (SJRWI) to do that portion of the survey.

The St. Marys portion was funded by section 319 of the Clean Water Act, which offers funding to help states and local communities with nonpoint source pollution problems.

In addition to finding large numbers of dairy, sheep and goats, the survey found a smattering of more exotic animals, including camels, reindeer and zebra, Nester said. The numbers are estimates and probably conservative, he added.

The survey also looked at the operation’s waste storage facility, the age of the operation, if animals had direct stream access and if they were confined or pastured, he said.

Of the 3,500 farm operations found in the watersheds, 25-30 were noted to have direct stream access for their animals, Nester said. Operators with potential problems will be contacted in the hope of finding a solution, Lake added.

“There were some places where the animals were just standing in the water because there were no adequate ways to keep them out,” he said. “We need to get back out and talk with (their owners) soon.

“There’s also a concern with the growing number of Amish in the area and the density of their community. Every square inch of the farm is utilized. They put a fence up right by the stream. We try to encourage buffers, but they don’t tend to adopt that process.”
Lake said he was surprised by the number of horses (10,580) found in the watersheds. “We had no idea how many small horse hobby farms there were,” he said. “The Amish also have more horses than we thought.”

The information will help Lake’s office decide how to target programs to operators who might have a specific need based on what type of animals they have, Nester said. “We have a great contact list. We can use that to get in touch with them about potential problems and cost-share programs that may help resolve a problem,” he said.

“This will help us to guide our programming. For example, for many of these smaller horse farms, we wonder what they’re doing with the manure. There might be cost-share money available for alternative ways to dispose of it, such as getting a company to haul it away.”

The survey could also lead to officials offering tips on how operators might improve their farms, Lake said. “This will open up a phenomenal new opportunity to work with them on better farm management practices,” he said. “It might be about improving how they use their land for grazing or getting them to better spread manure over a larger area of their farm.”

Sediment, E. coli and nutrients in animal waste are the three biggest problems in the St. Marys watershed, said Nester, who is writing a management plan for it. Farmers still using conventional tillage methods are the biggest cause of the sediment problems, and failing septic systems and livestock are the primary causes of E. coli and excessive nutrients, he added.

“IDEM (Indiana Department of Environmental Management) is no longer giving money out for septic systems, so this means we need to focus on livestock operations,” he said.

“In the St. Marys River, the water quality exceeds IDEM standards 80-90 percent of the time.”

The inventory was taken over the summer, with Nester and Jason Buuck, an agronomy technician for SJRWI, working in the St. Marys watershed. Buuck and officials from local SWCD offices conducted the count in the St. Joseph River watershed.