If you want thick and beautiful lawn, don't reach for the fertilizer - go to the fridge and get some milk instead!
David Wetzel, a former steel executive, told a conference of farmers in Linn that when he started a second career as a dairy farmer in 2002, he doused parts of his 320-acre farm with skim milk, which was a byproduct of his farm's specialty butters and cheeses.
He soon discovered that his cattle preferred those fields. He called in an expert to figure out what was going on, and the result was a bit staggering: His milk-fed land yielded 1,100 more pounds of grass per acre than untreated land. [...]
Wetzel said he began making butters and cheeses that required only the fats from the milk that his cows produced, which left behind large quantities of skim milk as a waste product. To dispose of it, he would drive up and down a portion of his pasture with milk pouring out of a tank. He dumped up to 600 gallons of skim milk on the field every other day.
"I came from a background that has nothing to do with farming," Wetzel said. "So I don't know the do's and don'ts. I don't have any relatives that would say, 'You can't do that.' So I just kind of did what felt right."
One day, he noticed that his cows favored that patch of field. The grass felt more supple and looked healthier and more dense in that area.
http://www.gnn.com/article/field-sprayed-with-milk-improves-grass/1139415
For the gardeners out there, try it yourself with your own ... product. For most plant 1/10 part it water is more than sufficient, some tolerate even 1/3. And citrus trees can take an occasional leak directly (so called traditional Austrian citrus tree fertilizer) as they are very nutrient hungry (as are bananas, pineapples and a lot of other plants too).
Your thought is a good one except that it may be unpasteurized, i.e. raw, milk which would require him to comply with a whole host of regulations that he's probably not set up to handle or it may be illegal to sell raw milk in his state. And no, you can't even give it away (not to mention the liability if someone were to get sick from it). Some states allow the sale of cheese made from raw milk as long as it's fermented over a certain number of days. Butter, I'm not sure. But if it's cultured butter, it's possible the same regs apply.
Even if he does pasteurize the milk before removing the fat for butter and cheese, there's a different set of regulations and handling practices to sell liquid milk versus solid milk products, not the least of which is getting your product to market before it spoils. Butter and cheese are less fussy that way.
Still, I agree it does seem wasteful.
It was done because it makes them gain weight faster than grass or standard feed.
Common sense & poison-concentration was clearly not part of the thought process.
Even today, "Downer Cows" are still brought to slaughter occasionally, and the guys who do it are not nearly sufficiently prosecuted.
It's only a few small differences that keep us from getting much more widespread BSE.