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Farm activities: dung spreading
It used to be said that
"where there's muck there's brass"
Sadly this is no longer the case as far as farming goes
James Irvine
Teviot Scientific, Cultybraggan Farm, Comrie,
Perthshire
Filed 04 Apr06
©www.land-care.org.uk
From the perspective of 4th March spring seemed
not far off, although in reality it was another month away. The
weather was perfect. The air was crisp and the forecast encouraging.
Although not too hard, the ground was sufficiently firm so that
the heavy machinery with fat tyres could go across it without making
marks.
Over the past year dung heaps have been made in
stubble fields on the farm as the cattle courts, which have been
housing over the winter some 120 suckler cows and their calves plus
some 20 breeding heifers and a number of bulls, are cleared and
replenished with fresh straw for bedding.
The 8 tonne dung spreader, which over the years
has done sterling work shifting literally hundreds of tonnes of
dung, has had a somewhat expensive overhaul, with replacement of
the chains that are connected with bars. When they are driven from
the tractor's power take off drive (pto) in a continuous loop, the
heaped up dung is forced along the floor to the back of the trailer
onto the vertically rotating blades. The result is that the dung
is spread evenly on the fields in strips the width of the trailer.
Section of a mature dung heap
- at least a year old
(To enlarge photo
CLICK HERE)
©Kimpton Graphics
One man can spread 10 acre field in a less
than a day with the right machinery. The job could have been done
even quicker if our JCB FarmSpecial with its telescopic jib and
large dung grab had been available.
Loading dung into the spreader with
a standard JCB and big bucket
(To enlarge photo Click
Here)
©Kimpton Graphics
The dung supplies a rich source of nutrients for
the soil and also much needed fibre. The requirement for the addition
of artificial (manufactured) fertiliser is thereby substantially
reduced.
Spreading dung with a Bunnings 8 tonne
spreader
(To enlarge photo Click
Here)
©Kimpton Graphics
It is important to choose the right weather conditions
to avoid the dung, rich in nitrogen, from being washed away into
watercourses. Not only would that be very wasteful, but it would
be bad for the watercourse and the animal and plant life therein.
The fields being spread are highly absorbent of water on account
of the character of the soil, provided that they are not frozen
hard or already nearly saturated with water. This is simply good
agricultural practice, such as our forefathers have done for generations,
although with much less mechanisation and a lot more toil. Carrying
for the soil is not the prerogative of the Soil Association, or
any other such movement, that has usurped the use of the word "organic"
for their own promotional purposes that so often lack credibility.
You can hardly get more "organic" than dung spreading.
Over the 18 years since I have been at Cultybraggan
Farm there has been no problem as far as the farm is concerned with
the quality of the water in the adjacent river Ruchill. The risk
has come from the adjacent - fortunately now defunct - MOD Cadet
Camp and its antiquated sewage arrangements. Fortunately also, Cultybraggan
Farm is not in an area of the country designated by the authorities
as a "Nitrogen Vulnerable Zone (NVZ)".
The dung is scattered out the back
of the spreader in an
even distribution of small clumps.
The houses in the background are a safe distance away
although they may benefit from some healthy farm odour.
In spite of some of them being close to a water course, the amount
of fertiliser and pesticide per square metre that their neat gardens
receive is probably far in excess of what a field gets
(To enlarge photo
Click Here)
©Kimpton Graphics
In earlier years these fields were used to grow
high quality malting barley. The malsters don't like too much nitrogen
in the grain, so one had to be careful how much dung was spread
on the fields. However, for the past 2 years the farm has grown
barley to feed the livestock, as the price offered by the malsters
over the price of feed barley did not merit the extra work, risk
and major hassles involved. Feed barley can give higher yields per
acre of both grain and straw. For a livestock farm, such as Cultybraggan,
the straw is of vital importance both for cattle bedding and for
feed over the winter - even more so this year as the cost of transport
seriously escalates.
The dung as it is spread on the stubble
field
(To enlarge photo
Click Here)
©Kimpton Graphics
Spreading dung is best limited to stubble fields
that are going to be ploughed and sown for cereals. To put dung
on grass that is going to be grazed or used for making silage runs
the risk of possibly spreading disease such as Johnes, if it is
present in the herd.
Whether the field requires additional artificial
fertiliser would depend on soil analysis, so that the balance between
nitrogen, phosphate and potassium (NPK) is appropriate for the crop
that is to be grown.
To keep a farm like Cultybraggan in good heart
it is important to have good integration between livestock and cereal
production. The terrain and the climate severely limit what can
be done on such a farm, which is fairly typical of many in Scotland.
Without the livestock the condition of the fields would rapidly
deteriorate. Without the barley the livestock could not survive
over the winter unless their numbers were severely limited or even
larger amounts of expensive feed were bought in.
Such is the current political climate in Scottish
farming, with its over-emphasis on what the authorities choose to
call "the environment", that many farms will have been
pondering what programme of cultivation they should follow this
year. The simplest answer would be not to cultivate at all. Growing
barley in most farms in Scotland is a loss making exercise. The
price the farmer gets for selling it is less than the cost of production.
The cost of producing quality calves and selling them on after weaning
at seven months to a year old is also likely to be less than the
income achieved. But a quality suckler herd of cows, together with
bulls that facilitate easy calving, and all as part of a closed
herd of high health status, is very difficult to replace in the
short term. It is easy to disrupt the rhythm of a farm that has
been established as being the most appropriate over many years in
terms of both economic and environmental sustainability, for the
sake of some short-term gain based on an ideological whim of politicians
and those in their payroll - such as geographers, zoologists, ecologists
and "land managers" who have had little or probably no
agricultural input throughout their training. Much private investment
has gone into such farms. There is an understandable reluctance
to abandon such a substantial on going commitment for some government
scheme that lacks credibility.
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