seeding

[Tim Harrigan]

Any chance you could find those tile lines with a probe?

[Tim Harrigan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3st0qZ_3vH0

For those who are interested, I updated the youtube video that I posted earlier about the work seeding cover crops with manure with field views of cover crops established with the various seeding methods. The update starts at about 3:49 of the video.

[Andy Carson]

Your cover crops definately look prettier than mine… Are you (or anyone else) familiar with animal powered systems for spreading liquid manure? I am curious if this system is practical on a small scale and how one might go about making a useable slurry using horse manure as a source. I don’t know anyone who does this, but maybe it has potential… It sure looks slick… Thoughts?

[dominiquer60]

If I recall correctly their was a Small Farmers Journal article about a farm in Europe, and I believe that they used horses to spread liquid manure from some sort of tank on a wheeled vehicle. I don’t have my stack of back issues to look at, but perhaps someone that has access to that issue would share with us if what I remember is correct.

Rain has put at ease our desperation for creative tillage ideas, we received .7 inches in the last 24, which is the biggest rain since mid July for us, and it looks like more tomorrow. I am off to spin some oats and rye, the cattle will help me incorporate the seed before our nice crumbly clay turns to pudding with this Tropical Storm. I am looking forward to a rainy morning breakfast and an easy day planting lettuce in the greenhouse:)

Erika

PS to Tim, so many of them are clogged that our long term goal (with older generation’s permission) is to replace them at a deeper depth, we have some old maps, but they always seem off when they try to work on them, I am not sure about finding them with a probe.

[Andy Carson]

Part of the reason I am curious/attracted to this is that with the way that my place is set up, it is concievable that liquid manure could be pumped through sprinklers directly onto crops and there would be no need for tradiational manure management (other than to remove solids from a pool from time to time). The other thing that might be nice about this (especially for horses) is that by selecting only water soluble nutrients, bedding materials would be left behind. That way, there is not high C materials tying up N while decomposing in the field. A lot of of sprinklers might be a pain to move around, but I only have two horses, and will be lucky to recover 1/3 of thier manure. This might be 9 tons a a year and with an N content of only 7 lb/ton it is unliley to be very effective fertilizer if spread uniformly over 5 acres. If concentrated on just one acre, though, that’s a little over 60 lbs per acre and this would probably be nice. By concentrating the liquid manure in this much smaller area, spinkler would not have to be moved very often. Really, I am not sure if sprinklers can handle liquid manure or if some other system is required due to particulates. Even if it is tank based, i could see advantages over a traditional manure spreader… The bedding, for one, wouldn’t be spread. Also, truely composting solid manure requires turning it, which is kinda of a pain for one without a front end loader. Ideas…

[dlskidmore]

@Countymouse 21085 wrote:

Really, I am not sure if sprinklers can handle liquid manure or if some other system is required due to particulates.

I doubt the average sprinkler system could, but it might be able to manage a pre-filtered manure tea. You’d be left with a lot of solids in the bottom of the tank that had to be composted and spread the old way.

[Tim Harrigan]

Countymouse;21081 wrote:

… Are you (or anyone else) familiar with animal powered systems for spreading liquid manure? I am curious if this system is practical on a small scale and how one might go about making a useable slurry using horse manure as a source…

I know there was a 500 gal liquid spreader at HPD with a gas engine on steel wheels. There is a picture of it in RH. The system that I have for seeding with liquid manure is possible with draft animals but it would be quite a challenge because it combines tillage and manure application. I think it is more practical to go with a compost system with horse and probably poultry manure, liquid might make more sense with dairy, swine and beef in some cases. I guess the bottom line is manure and cover crops are a good match in most systems. In certain systems that include heavy nitrogen feeders such as corn it is probably best the think about how you can integrate cover crops, manure and compost in the rotation.

[Andy Carson]

Some interesting reading, in case anyone is interested in this topic.
http://www.cheboygancoop.com/animalscience/manure/1223.pdf
It seems that liquid manure can be spread with a spinkler, but it must be pretty dilute and suffers heavy N loss to the atmosphere during the process. Not a good deal and there is still all the solids to spread. Much better to spread it with a tanker and incorporate immediately, but that’s a big load to pull. I suppose this is why this method isn’t used much and dealing with the solid compost is more popular…

[near horse]

I’ve seen dairies, including the University dairy here, pump straight out of the lagoon onto adjacent grass hay ground using a high output irrigation nozzle (look like a fire hose nozzle).

[near horse]

@Countymouse 21085 wrote:

Part of the reason I am curious/attracted to this is that with the way that my place is set up, it is concievable that liquid manure could be pumped through sprinklers directly onto crops and there would be no need for tradiational manure management (other than to remove solids from a pool from time to time). The other thing that might be nice about this (especially for horses) is that by selecting only water soluble nutrients, bedding materials would be left behind. That way, there is not high C materials tying up N while decomposing in the field. A lot of of sprinklers might be a pain to move around, but I only have two horses, and will be lucky to recover 1/3 of thier manure. This might be 9 tons a a year and with an N content of only 7 lb/ton it is unliley to be very effective fertilizer if spread uniformly over 5 acres. If concentrated on just one acre, though, that’s a little over 60 lbs per acre and this would probably be nice. By concentrating the liquid manure in this much smaller area, spinkler would not have to be moved very often. Really, I am not sure if sprinklers can handle liquid manure or if some other system is required due to particulates. Even if it is tank based, i could see advantages over a traditional manure spreader… The bedding, for one, wouldn’t be spread. Also, truely composting solid manure requires turning it, which is kinda of a pain for one without a front end loader. Ideas…

Have you ever seen those pasture sprinklers that “roll themselves up”? Really it’s just one big nozzle on a 2 wheel dolly using about a 2″ hose line. There’s a spool that carries the line and you anchor it at one end of a field. As the water (or liq manure?) is pumped through the line, the spool reels in the sprinkler slowly so it works its way across a field. It might take 2 passes to cover a football field (if I recall). That might work for your needs. And some of the high output “trash pumps” (like Honda) can handle particulates up to a certain size. Some sump type pumps handle poop too – nicknamed poop grinders.

I wonder, and maybe this is what Tim’s talking about with slurry seeding, why one couldn’t rig up some way of applying seed similar to what the hydroseeders do for lawns. Essentially, seed in a mixture with some nutrients and a sort of compost. We might get a higher success rate when we overseed our pastures/hayfields.

Tim, my access to a computer able to view youtube is limited. Can you please explain the slurry seeding idea in more detail? Thanks.

[Tim Harrigan]

It is certainly possible to put together a system for applying manure either by hauling or irrigation but it does not seem practical for just a few animals, particularly if those animals are on pasture for a good part of the year. You would need some sort of storage pit or lagoon and then the added mechanical components to make it work. It would be much more cost effective and easier to make arrangements with a local livestock producer to have a few loads spread on your ground.

In slurry seeding I mix cover crop seed directly in the tank spreader and use an AerWay with a drop tube application system on the tank to loosen the soil and then place the seed-laden slurry in the loosened soil. With dairy manure the bedding sometimes acts sort of like the tackifiers used with hydroseeding lawns, but really what I am trying to do is have the nutrient rich slurry carry the seed down into the fractured soil where it is protected from wide swings in temperature and moisture. This system alleviates shallow soil compaction, improves infiltration of the liquid manure and rainfall thereby reducing runoff and erosion, starts a cover crop soon after manure application to trap and cycle nutrients, brings the farm closer to having a permanent vegetative cover on the ground, and combines low-disturbance tillage, manure application and seeding of a cover crop in one operation.

[Andy Carson]

@Tim Harrigan 21097 wrote:

It would be much more cost effective and easier to make arrangements with a local livestock producer to have a few loads spread on your ground.

Good point. Before I did more reading about this, I really overestimated the fertilizer value of my horse manure. I’m not saying it’s not important, but I agree there is simply not enough of it to develop a complex management system for. There’s a cow-calf beef producer a half mile away that I was talking to the other day about what he does with his manure. His management style is that the manure pretty much builds up in his barns, holding pens, and run ins throughout the year and he cleans it all out in the spring. At that point, he says most ofit is very compacted and some of the straw has degraded. I don’t know how true that could be, but it’s still not what I would call compost. This was holding me back from investigating it further, even though I could tell he wanted to see if I wanted to buy it (and what I might pay) and he certainly has plenty of manure (he has about 50 cow-calf pairs). I would really want to spread it myself, so it will get done in time and not have to worry if he is spreading on field “C” rather than field “D.” So then, he would be dumping this manure in a big pile that I would spread with my horse and a conventional spreader… Also, by having him load and deliver it, it will be turned once. Once is better than nothing, but I’ll have to think about this more…

[dlskidmore]

@Countymouse 21101 wrote:

At that point, he says most ofit is very compacted and some of the straw has degraded. I don’t know how true that could be, but it’s still not what I would call compost.

You can always ask for a core sample a few weeks before he cleans the barn and needs a place to put it.

[dlskidmore]

@dlskidmore 21124 wrote:

You can always ask for a core sample a few weeks before he cleans the barn and needs a place to put it.

Anyone know how expensive US Composting Council Seal of Testing Assurance composts tests are? I recall my extension office charges quite a bit for trace metal testing, but some of the other stuff isn’t bad, like pH and N-P-K.

[near horse]

I just mucked out one of our deep bedded barns and ended up using a mini excavator to dig it out. The top layer was sort of a mix of straw/hay/manure but down a few inches and that stuff was pretty nice – broken down to particles less than 3/4″ in size (or smaller). But that stuff was pretty packed down.

Tim – how about the value of slurry seeding to over seed a standing pasture or grass stand? The big concern w/ over seeding (I thought) was getting good soil/seed contact

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