Fertilizer spreader. very long post!

Do you think I could spread chicken manure pellets that had a lot of dirt mixed in? Let me explain. I do that custom organic farming for my neighbor. He has me spread the pellets before planting with my 6 ton fert. spreader. It works good through the spreader. They deliver it with end dump semi's. put it on a pile. I reload it on spreader with my front end loader. As my brother-in-law is spreading I run bucket fulls out to him and dump in spreader. spreader goes empty in time so then he comes back to pile and I load spreader full and he spreads again with me bringing bucket fulls to him. Repeat, repeat. Now here's where the problem comes. Where do we have the semi's put the pile. Last year I had them pile some on them grass/clover buffer strips and some in middle of field. When I got down to end of buffer strip pile I got a lot of grass/ clover scooped into spreader. What a nite mare as it kept plugging up gate on spreader. Was glad to get done with that pile and start on one in middle of field. But when I got down to bottom of that pile I started to get a lot of dirt in spreader. I sure didn't want to get so much dirt in there that the apron would brake and I would have to shovel it out by hand so when I scraped up as much as I could I just spread the last of it out by back dragging with loader. Back dragged it over about 2 acres. Well that two acres had so much pellets and was so "hot" that the crop didn't grow. Heck the weeds wouldn't even grow there. So I don't want to do that again. My question is--- what if I would scoop up the pile so clean that I scooped up maybe 3-4 inches of dirt? do you think that would come out the spreader? Do you think it would break the apron? There is an old cement cattle feedlot on the other farm I do for him and we dump the pellets there when spreading on that farm. That works great. But that would mean driving a mile to this field every load and what would the loader operator do while waiting for spreader to unload? Seams kinda fruitless to shuttle a bucketful a mile. It would take so long doing it that way and would cost the owner a fortune to hire me to do it. Opinions??

Are there any big chicken or turkey houses in your area?If so there should be some regular litter spreaders for rent in the area or a farmer that'd rent you a spreader.Regular litter spreader would spread it dirt and all no problem.

The more dirt you put in the spreader, the more problems you are going to have. Perhaps if you scraped all the dirt off an area to plow depth, creating a pad for the trucks to dump on, you would have a firmer base to work on that would reduce the amount of dirt you are getting in the spreader. After cleanup, you would have to push the top soil back onto the " pad" and level. Again, a lot of expense.

I would pick a location where you wouldn't have to completely clean up the pellets. Just do the best you can and leave what you can't get without scooping up a bunch of dirt. The area may be "scorched earth" for a while but it will recover eventually.

Think I would dump it all in the old feed lot and rice the mile to the far away field. Heck a mile is nothing in terms of distance, I have a field that is a half mile long , one trip up and back is a mile, no big deal!

I agree with Barnyard. Just pick one spot and keep dumping the loads there and don't clean up until the last one. I have alway had lime dumped in the field and loaded it into a six ton spreader without getting a significant amount of sod or dirt. It does require a little hand work at the end which helps me to be able to still operate a Mexican bulldozer into my 70s.

Thinking about it why do you need another person to be the loader operator? Seems to me its a one person job with one loader and one spreader.When I haul hay its a one person job even though I use three different tractors every cycle.Like Bruce said a mile on a tractor in road gear is nothing as far as distance.

If you put down a big tarp you can with a little care load off from it. We have used that for potash in the field. Just kick it up as you pick up the tarp when done. We do that then just scrap it up carefully with the bucket. Can even smooth out the ground first if you like.

I've never seen chicken litter pellets so not sure how it spreads, we have chicken litter, spreading it in a standard fertilizer spreader doesn't work well as it keeps bridging and doesn't spread at a even rate.
Also a 6 ton spreader will only hold a couple tons of litter and we spread at a rate of 2+ tons per acre.
What is the application rate for pelletized litter?

Our litter spreader has a 32" wide chain but spreading at 2 tons per acre the gate is open 4-6". Last time we spread with a standard 20" chain spreader we had the gate full open barely getting 2 tons per.

I prefer the longer bottomed skid steer style bucket over tractor loader buckets, the longer bottom will skim over the ground and not dig a bad. Because litter is so light I had a local welder build me a bucket for loading litter, 84" wide, 36" deep, 32" high, holds around 1500 lb of litter per scoop.