Manure Application Cost

Finally settled up with a cattle feed yard that applied liquid pooh to 80 ac. for me last fall. The cost of the manure was very competitive with commercial fert. The
application fee was one cent per gal. At 5000 gpa or $50 an ac. seem a bit high for a FWD pulling a chisel plow and drag hose. Having the commercial fert and their
application fee would have cost considerably less. Maybe this is the going rate, does anyone know?

I had hog manure hauled in a mile with a tractor and 5000? gallon tank, knifed in on 66 acres for 62.90/acre. I don't know what the analysis of this hog manure is compared to the analysis for your cattle manure. This was still cheaper than commercial fertilizer in the $110 per acre range

When I had the dairy I had a custom pumper do the pit...a bit less than what you paid, but I thought he was reasonable. 5000 gpa, and provided a manure analysis that showed NPK...Well over 180 lbs per acre N, plus the chisel did the tillage. Next year, I applied NO fertilizer on those acres. Did that for about 15-20 years. Well worth it. You do need the analysis tho to adjust/decide for extra fertilizer.

Transporting liquid manure gets slower and more expensive as the distance increases. If you are close enough to the feedlot that a drag hose can be used, I think you have the leverage to allow them to "dispose of" their manure on your land at no cost to you. Any fertilizer value can offset the compaction from their applicator, your loss of property value and your inconvenience of being within hearing and smelling distance to the feedlot. That arrangement works for many feedlots and neighbors.

In my opinion, charging an application fee on top of the supposed fertilizer value is ridiculous, you would be better off staying with commercial fertilizer in that deal.

It should be interesting to compare opinions of the sellers and buyers on this topic.

I disagree with your assessment- manure does have value, and here, while dairies need to have manure management plans (ie, enough acres), it is logical to charge for the manure...it can replace purchased fertilizer. With the drag hose system compaction is not an issue, and knifing it in produces no odor, plus retains all N value. You couldn"t smell our fields when the knifing was done. Surface application, yes, but that is just a waste of N, since it volatilizes. Surface app, then digging/disking it in, is still a waste of N, and the field will smell.

I do not see how commercial fertilizer could have been less. The application fee is usually more than a penny a gallon around here. It is more like 2-3 cents per.

It cost me .02

I didn't know they charged! I had my farm triple covered a few years back by a large dairy about 5 miles away and then double covered a couple years later and was thanked for letting them use my property. The owner drove in one day and ask and I said have at it. My Grandson has around a thousand head of cattle and covered it well three years ago before he put the farm to alfalfa. I'll have to ask him if he charges the people he spreads manure on their fields. He has both liquid and dry. I have not watched him deal with the liquid but have seen him mix the dry in at a distance with some type of field cultivator.

While I have no personal knowledge on the subject it would seem to be a supply and demand issue for a very small local area.

Use to be meat chicken growers would spread manure on local dairy farms; but since the mom and pop dairy farms are gone that is not available anymore. With the state cracking down on run off from dairy farm oxidation ponds in the past some have taken a different approach.

Example;
When the local egg farm moved in they bought thousands of acres in the middle of no where.
Had all the trees cut off; and they use there own land to spread manure from the chicken houses.
Since they own the land they can contour it to where there is no run off and no pollution to local streams.

I used to work for a world wide fertilizer and chemical company and still do business with them. Application fee was always $12 an acre and you got a guaranteed analysis. Manure is a good thing for some but to me it's just throwing money into the wind and praying it comes back because you have no idea what you are getting where. You're first load might be high in p&k and your second load very low. Do you know where the first load ran out? In my opinion gps sampling and variable rate spreading is the only way to go. What we save in fertilizer will more than pay for the lime and the best part is you're putting it where it needs to be not where you think it might need. Without grid sampling it's like going to the doctor and saying I need some medicine. What's wrong with you? I don't know I just need some medicine.

The huge dairies around here didn't used to charge, just needed land to dump manure on. They are still needing land to dump manure on, but now want to charge for it. Which is fine if you want fully loaded 6-8000 gallon semi tankers driving all over your field with only tandems on the tanks. Talk about compaction, yikes

Manure has a lot of extras in micros and biological stuff and some organic matter that you just don't get in commercial fertilizer.

I would always take manure over commercial if the $$$ are close. Always. I can see three large hog operations from my yard, as well as a dairy and also a heifer feeding operation, and still I can't get any manure, it is used by those closer than me. I understand typically they pay for 2/3 the value of the P and K, as well as the application costs.

Having said that, manure is a very uneven fertilizer, even if you try your best. As well its strength is some of it is very slow release, maybe into the third year after application, but that is then hard to account for and leaves gaps over the three year period.

So by far the best way to go is get manure applied, apply it so you get one nutirient as high as you need for the crop (often P) and then come in with commercial fertilizer to fill in the gaps and level off the 'highs and lows' of manure application. Commercial fertilizer is much more predictable, but it's also very incomplete.

Many years ago I saw a fella spread manure and then in spring the commercial fertilizer truck would go over the same field, it seemed silly to me at the time. Now I get it, it's the right way to go.

As you say variable rate and grid or zone sampling works so very good with all this.

Im kinda scared of the 'double or triple' applied guys, they probably built up too much P, and wasted some N, and all us farmers are getting a black eye from this. Now back when my farm was mined out by lack of fertilizer, a double or triple application likely would have been the right thing; but I'd want to know before doing that with soil tests and manure tests even if imperfect you can at least have a plan.

A fella here with hog barns didn't want to share his hog manure, he figured if a little was good a lot was better and kept building his soils over applying.

Until his beans grew really really well, looked great, but kind of wanted to lodge over, and turned out they weren't setting many pods any more - the excess manure was going into growing kraut, not setting flowers and bean pods. Oops! He got it changed around and is selling his manure too now.

Paul

A commercial livestock outfit needs a manure management plan in place before they spread. An analysis needs to be done and grid sampling needs to be done and proven and manure can be spread using VRT going by the results of the gridding. Grid sampling is required so the soil doesn't build up too much P&K. Farms around here that use only manure for fertilizer have the best yields year after year. There is no denying consistency is harder to obtain with manure, especially solid manure. Some feed yards are composting manure to get better consistency and first year availability to the crops. I have been using composted cattle manure on most of my acres but I haven't used it long enough to tell if it's good or bad. I "have been told" it's good stuff. The jury is still out. A local 5,000,000 bird egg laying outfit close to me composts all of the manure inside of buildings. When they first started this the manure was too chunky and inconsistent but they have been working on getting it better by mixing corn stalks or old hay with the manure to loosen it up. I have not used their composted manure because they think it is gold. We have tons of turkey manure used in this area and the guys really like it but I haven't used any myself to made a judgment on it. In the fall when the turkey manure is being spread everyone for miles around knows it by the smell but the smell doesn't last long.

So, yes manure is more inconsistent, but there is no negative talk about the usefulness of manure as fertilizer in this area after many years of manure used as fertilizer.

I'd say if you were the guy that owned the big equipment, put the fuel in it, paid the driver and fixed it when it went wrong you wouldn't be far out at a guess. Whats all that worth if you owned the equipment at an hourly rate and had to do the job yourself. plus buy fertilizer on top your time, and equipments not free is it.

I'm having the same argument with my Dad If my backhoe was out on another guys land it's earning $80 an hour/pays it's expenses. If it's here working its costing me money As it works for $80 a virtual hour( Non existent $80 payment) I never see and have to fix it buy fuel and pay for parts and run it on our own place.
I wouldn't say anything to the guy you might find you end up doing more work and buying synthetic fertilizer. I got guys here want to pay $600 Canadian an hour, for a custom crew spreading to get straw based hog manure I'm going to give them to get rid of to save me time and hasstle spreading so much here. Regards Robert

Here in central Iowa I pay .0175 per gallon. We put on 4000-4500 gallons per acre. Most years that is our total NPK program. We have been continuous corn for 8 years.