About 10 years ago, Roger Erickson says his dairy farm near Neillsville reported a 4,000-gallon manure spill.

“A car forced one of our manure trucks off the road and it rolled over,” he said.

He says he knew what to do because it was part of his farm's nutrient management plan.

Now, he's helping other farmers. On Wednesday, he let the county dump hundreds of gallons of manure on his field, and show those farmers how to contain the mess.

“I think it's really to be thinking, to be proactive,” said Agronomist Kevin Erb. “So that, when something happens, you don't have to think, okay, what should I do? How should I do it? You instinctively know.”

The extension office says, typically, after one of these presentations, the number of reports of manure spills goes up. However, it says the severity of those spills goes down, and that's part of what it’s trying to achieve.

Instructors say manure spills can pollute water nearby, so the training involved shows the farmers ways to prevent spills, then it uses equipment and makeshift dams to stop the spread if a spill happens.

“We probably all know how to react, but when the incident occurs, it's maintaining the calmness and the cool-headedness to remember how to react,” said Clark County Conservationist Matt Zoschke.

“We're dealing with an entirely different type of manure than farmers dealt with 30, 40 years ago,” Erb said. “They have to learn these new techniques to go with the new technologies."

Roger says he'll have corn on the field next year, and that the manure used on Wednesday should already be cleaned up.

“When you're handling that volume of manure, anything could happen,” he said.

Now he hopes more of his neighbors are ready for whatever does happen on their farms.

The UW-Extension says Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are the only states that use real manure during their training. It's held 16 other manure spill response training events in the state, and may hold them in Buffalo and Barron counties this fall.