Liquid Manure??

[txfishing]

Curious if anyone out there fertilizes their pasture with "Liquid Manure"?

I read somewhere that you can gather some manure in a potato sac then tie the top so that the manure doesn't escape. Fill a 55 gallon drum full of water then dump the sac full of manure into the drum. This makes a kind of manure tea. :shock: Extracting most of the the nutrients from the sac and into the water. After about two weeks once the water gets dark brown you can spray that "liquid manure" mixture onto the pasture. Does this sound like a good idea to you guys?

Looking for the most affordable way to fertilize my 10 acres of Bahia Grass. With a few head of angus cows, I have plenty of manure I could use.

 

[skyeagle]

Seams like it would take lot of time. I like the Idea though
maybe Ranchcop has some input.
I wonder how many gallons to the ac.

 

[Aero]

i think we will stick with the manure spreader and use the soil as a potato sack.

 

[skyeagle]

Thats what I was thinking. When I first moved on my land
in the fall We disc the pastures and use a manure spreader
to cover it good. Then just let winter work it in. Put cattle
on it in the spring.

 

[polledbull]

Curious if anyone out there fertilizes their pasture with "Liquid Manure"?

I read somewhere that you can gather some manure in a potato sac then tie the top so that the manure doesn't escape. Fill a 55 gallon drum full of water then dump the sac full of manure into the drum. This makes a kind of manure tea. :shock: Extracting most of the the nutrients from the sac and into the water. After about two weeks once the water gets dark brown you can spray that "liquid manure" mixture onto the pasture. Does this sound like a good idea to you guys?

Looking for the most affordable way to fertilize my 10 acres of Bahia Grass. With a few head of angus cows, I have plenty of manure I could use.[/quote

I would even think of trying this . 55 gal drum of "manure tea" wont get you started. Now if you had liquid manure in a tanker ( honey wagon) It is very practical to do. It also will depend on your waste analysis on the liquid as to how much you will need per acre. You are trying to get the plant avaliable nitrogen (PAN) from the waste water.

 

[txfishing]

Supposedly you have to delute the liquid manure 1 part Liquid manure and upto 3 parts water then spray it. So a 55 Gallon Drum will make upto 165 gallons to spray. A website mentioned Liquid Manure Composition as follows:

N (Nitrogen) = 40
P (Phosphorus) = 27
K (Potash) = 23
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/livestk/01222.html

When I saw this, I thought I could avoid having to buy a $1,000 manure spreader.

This website talks about making it.

http://www.farmradio.org/english/radio- ... p#footnote

 

[Saltydawg]

Up here we have a lot of large dairy farms in the area with "poop ponds".

Its exactly what it sounds like lol.....everything from the milking parlors and barns is dumped in the pond and they have a big auger assembly at the bottom to keep it churned up and "fresh" lol.

They also have a loading area built in with a spicket so a large tanker/spreader truck can fill up and haul it to whoever's field. Trucks have big wide wheels so they can drive right out into a reasonably solid field and spray it.

Normally the farmers with the ponds give the manure away....you just have to pay for their driver and truck time.
I pay about $50 a truckload and it's money well spent.

Works very good.

 

[Alan]

If you have the manure to spread I think $1000 for a manure spreader is a good deal. It will pay for it self in no time. I'm in slightly different situation; I'm a hobby rancher, building to about 25 head of cows, I also have 6, soon to be 7 horses that I stall and turn out daily. I purchased an $1800 Frontier manure spreader, pulle by 4 wheeler, and spread the horse manure on the pastures for the cattle. A. No huge pile of manure building up and B. Judging by the looks of early growth I believe I've increase the amoount of grass in the pasture, true spring well tell.

JMO,
Alan

 

[Dave]

A potato sack of manure of manure dunked in a drum of water wont test any where near that high in nutrients. The manure itself wont test that high to start with. Dunking it in water dilutes it, it doesn't make it stronger.
Liquid manure out of a manure pond or lagoon is a different thing. In those cases the manure is kept in a liquid form because it is easier and cheaper to pump it rather than haul it. It is also generally a slurry much thicker than the potato sack method and as such has more nutrients. I have run hundreds of tests on samples out of dairy manure lagoons. They average somewhere between 12 and 20 pounds of N per 1,000 gallons. And that is manure from dairy cows who are fed considerably better than a few angus cows. You have to put nutrient into the front end of the cow to get nutrient out the back end.
Dave

 

[Workinonit Farm]

.everything from the milking parlors and barns is dumped in the pond and they have a big auger assembly at the bottom to keep it churned up and "fresh" lol.

They also have a loading area built in with a spicket so a large tanker/spreader truck can fill up and haul it

Normally the farmers with the ponds give the manure away....you just have to pay for their driver and truck time.

Around here they call those ponds "lagoons". I would love to have a few truck-loads of the stuff, but the dairies around here use it on their own fields and won't part with any of it.

I have used small batches of "manure tea" for my garden.

Katherine

 

[Bluestem]

Manure tea has been used for a number of years. If you compost the manure first it will work better. The latest twist is to also aerate it (aerated compost tea) which works even better. Apply at 5 to 20 gallons per acre.

 

[txfishing]

Manure tea has been used for a number of years. If you compost the manure first it will work better. The latest twist is to also aerate it (aerated compost tea) which works even better. Apply at 5 to 20 gallons per acre.

Thanks Bluestem
Sounds like it may work for a small operation. Is it okay to mix an herbicide such as 2-4D with it? That way I can knock out two birds with one stone.

Thanks!

 

[Bluestem]

Actually some large operations are using it. The 2-4d may kill some of the benefits of using the tea. You could use a soil innoculant with the 2-4d. Jar test first. You don't a tank full of jello.

 

[ALACOWMAN]

they need to change the name from manure tea to dookie juice :cboy:

 

[moocow]

Interesting comment about adding air to the drum. Municipal sewage plants do this during one phase of the operation to "excite" the bactria into going to work on the liquid in the tank. Guess this would work in your drum, but not sure if it's worth the effort. Give it a sample run and let us know what happens, I doubt the concentrations would be high enough to burn off plant life.

 

[txfishing]

Interesting comment about adding air to the drum. Municipal sewage plants do this during one phase of the operation to "excite" the bactria into going to work on the liquid in the tank. Guess this would work in your drum, but not sure if it's worth the effort. Give it a sample run and let us know what happens, I doubt the concentrations would be high enough to burn off plant life.

Will do. It sounds like a cheap alternative to a Manure spreader or other types of fertilizer.

The grass is not able to chew the nutrients, it has to drink them. ;-) In the case where manure or another non liquid fertilizer is spread, you have to wait on rain to come in order to extract the nutrients. In the "Liquid Manure, Manure Tea, Compost Tea" methods folks are talking about, the same extraction is happening within a Manure Pond, Lagoon or barrels.

As I see it, the only thing you are not getting with this method is the benifit of the actual manure on the pasture to help retain soil moister and the slow release of the nutrients.

I'm interested in it for a small operation like mine, where I don't have piles of manure to spread nor alot of money to spend.

I'll be trying it in early April and let you all know.