On Hillside Farm, Laura and Scott Flory and his parents, Dale and Janet, use a closed-loop flushing system in their dairy barn.

The system cut their milking time in half while allowing them to double the herd size and reduced electricity usage by 40 percent.

Inside the free-stall barn, the cows lie on sand beds, and water is flushed through three alleyways on a rotating schedule. Each alley is flushed every four hours. The alleys carry water, waste and extra sand to underground channels that move everything downhill to a storage area.

The sand settles in a concrete lane, the solid waste is screened out and the remaining liquid is mixed with rainwater and used to re-flush the barn. Any excess wastewater is stored in a lagoon pit for use as liquid fertilizer. Wet sand is scooped out daily and left to dry before it’s re-used in the barn.

The Florys allow the manure to dry before fertilizing crop fields with it. This system, which works with gravity, reduces the farm’s amount of needed machinery, provides nutrients to the fields and keeps the animals and the barn clean. And because the sand is inorganic, it won’t grow bacteria as long as the waste is removed from it.

Dale and Janet had started the dairy herd in 1980 on land that Janet’s family has farmed for 200 years and Laura and Scott joined the family business in 2009 after graduating with dairy science degrees from Virginia Tech. At that time, the buildings were starting to show their wear.

Rather than repair their former barns and milking parlor, the family decided to build a new barn and refurbish some other facilities. Planning started in 2012, and in 2013 they began construction of a free-stall barn with a robotic milking system and the infrastructure needed for the flushing system.

Today the Florys milk 200 cows and grow alfalfa, corn for silage, soybeans and wheat on about 800 acres.

“We are proud of how we’re taking care of our animals and also doing things that are better for the environment,” Laura Flory said. “We’re enjoying our dairy career more now than ever before.”