Nutrient Transfer

[grassfarmer]

I'm always interested in nutrient cycling on the farm but got a different perspective on nutrient transfer today. Attended the farm sale at a local feedlot that is closing down and obviously hadn't had enough land to spread manure on over the years. The local colony had been hauling manure away with grain trucks until the rain came last week, to stack on some of their land about 4 miles from the feedlot. They have a pile 1/2 a mile long and one grain truck high already and you can't see where they have been in the feedlot!(you could see the difference to the roads though - cost Ponoka county a few loads of gravel!) The value of this previously unused resource is incalculable to me - is it worth 100k or maybe 200k?. When one quarter of poorish pasture only made $115,000 it puts it in perspective. Most of the local farmers have sold silage to this feedlot over the years and it's clear that a lot of the wealth of their soil was stacked up in those big manure piles. Not a very efficient way to cycle nutrients from an industry perspective yet I suspect this practice is commonplace.

[Rodjam]

Maybe that is why there was a sale. I know someone there was getting there share of nutrition.

[PureCountry]

I agree 100% on the inefficiency of the system GF. A neighbour asked how we can waste so much with our bale grazing system, and I asked what he meant. He said he couldn't stand to bale graze b/c of all the waste the cows leave behind. I told him it's all how you look at it.

We bale graze on the worst, sandiest land on our ranch. We buy feed in, which is the same as importing nutrients, and the cows spread it over, and incorporate it into, the soil. Whatever residue is left over is certainly not waste. It holds moisture and as it breaks down, the nutrient cycle continues into the soil. Anything decaying/composting is releasing nitrogen - very usable nitrogen for plant growth.

This works very well for our sandy cropland, because some of it has been depleted so far, that the pH has dropped below 6. And since decaying/composting material has the effect of raising pH, it serves a dual purpose to rebuild the soil and help get it to the point where we can seed it back to grass and alfalfa.

When I started paying attention to these things on our own place, I realized how deserts formed. Constant and continuous cropping or abuse of soils depletes it of its nutrients to the point where nothing will grow, and you are left with no soil - just aggregate in the form of sand. It sounds a little extreme, but it can happen very, very easily.

[wd40]

What do you do for grain farmers who would rather buy fertilizer from down town than take manure at any stage or price.

Many of the "canned" agromomists are any smarter.

[PureCountry]

Quote - "Many of the "canned" agromomists are any smarter."

I'm not sure what ya mean by that wd40. For crop farming, it doesn't need to be any different really. There are thousands of natural additives that can be added to the soil on cropland. It all comes down to looking at the needs of the soil, instead of just the needs of the plant, ie., NPK fertilizers.

Agricore, Agpro, Cargill, or whoever. They all try to address what the plant needs. I want to figure out what my soils need, and the plants should just flourish from there.

[cowman]

Its really all about price and the quality of the product? Manure sounds good but in reality you don't get the proper mix of nutrients and it is incredibly expensive to transport?
Ask any hog farmer if you can haul away his manure for free and he will love you! Do you ever wonder why all the hog farmers crops are laying flat on the ground come August?
Manure handling of any sort is just too expensive to justify its use...unless of course it is your own and you have no other option.

[grassfarmer]

Liquid manure I don't want - it kills the earthworms and increases acidity, much like chemical fertiliser. The water in it makes it prohibitive to haul far. The solid stuff is like gold dust though particularily if it has straw in it and is well composted. Well worth transporting, within reasonable distances.

[cowman]

Reasonable distances...is definitely true.
My hog farmer neighbor got himself in a bind several years ago because he expanded his operation, but never got the new lagoon up and running! So he figured it would be a good idea if he spread it on a 40 acre pasture I had adjacent to his place. I figured well sure why not, free fertilizer? Unfortunately it completely wiped out any alphafa still left in the pasture and the darned fescue just went nuts! In the end it made the pasture poorer.

[cswilson]

We trtansport our manure in these incredibly cheap units called beef cows-I haven 't bought fertilizer or spray in at least 15 years or had to reseed a pasture-grow just as much grass and run as many cow units-or more-than the chem junkies.Instead of spending 20 bucks an acre on fertilizer or spray-spend it on fencing,water systems etc-you'll be better off. First thing to remember if a cow eats it and gains weright on it-don't waste money trying to kill itlol. Real funny article in grain news about the proper harrow to spread manure on grass with-this guy says unharrowed manure will choke grass out-what a load of unaldulterated b.s.-where we feed in winter the maure is 6-8 inches deep in spring-grass is probably 18 inches high there now and we grazed it once already-(15 cowdays/acre). Think of it if you could kill grass by spreading manure who'd use Roundup lol.

[cowman]

The boy is a great fan of not harrowing anything...and he may be right! However I like to get out there with the pasture harrows and bust things up!
Maybe I am just recreational harrowing!

[cswilson]

We harrow the arena we buck bulls in lol-that's it.

[cswilson]

We harrow the arena we buck bulls in lol-that's it.