Beef cattle and their slurry requirements are a core factor to consider when managing your farm’s day-to-day operations. Turning out highly productive farm animals as well as utilising the assets available to the farmer are important farm management factors. Slurry is the most valuable fertiliser available to the farmer. Beef cattle are commonly housed on slatted floors, allowing their waste to be collected in the underground tank easily. To allow for the highest level of hygiene in their housing, and prevent the livestock from standing in their own waste, the addition of hydraulic scrapers is the perfect solution.
More commonly used on beef farms, is the addition of our Smart Slurry Aeration System. This system was originally developed for beef cattle, and with years of experience, we have adapted the system to dairy cattle and pigs. This system will help the farmer utilise their slurry to the best of their ability.
There are several ways in which farmers can take advantage of their animals’ waste and slurry. It is well known that livestock slurry is rich in nutrients like Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium, therefore can be utilised back into your farm, for example in silage fields or grazing. Let’s examine some of the benefits of our slurry management innovations.
Promotion of Grass ReGrowth Rates
Dairypower has created the class-leading Smart Slurry Aeration System which is an environmentally friendly alternative to the traditional method using a tractor agitator. The way this system works is simple! Slurry is stored in a tank of any kind as normal, our Smart Slurry Aeration System is fixed as pipework to the base of the tank. Air is then pumped into the base of the tank, producing bubbles which migrate through the slurry, migrating to the top of the tank. This is how the system gets its name as an aeration system. This will happen for 1 minute in each section of the tank until the tank is fully aerated. The system will run 4-6 times per day. Incorporating this system into your slurry storage will prevent a hard crust from developing, avoiding the production of harmful or toxic gases. Not only does this system increase safety, it also increases the Nitrogen content available in the slurry! This can be as large as a 70% increase in Nitrogen available, which is a huge difference and can greatly impact the yield of your grass, crops and silage fields.
This system is fantastic for promoting grass regrowth rates, as Nitrogen is one of the most important nutrients to ensure that crops and grass grow. With an extra 70% availability of nitrogen, this should result in a 14% or so yield increase of your grass.
Reduction in Chemical Fertiliser Usage
With the addition of our Smart Slurry Aeration System, farmers have been able to reduce the amount of additional chemical fertiliser which would normally be needed for fields or crops. The additional nutrient content boost, thanks to the aeration system makes the slurry even more valuable and reduces the need for spending so much money on chemical fertilisers.
Our Smart Slurry Aeration System eliminates the need for the common method of tractor agitation – leaving your slurry in a constant, pumpable state. The simplicity of the system, allows the farmer to spread slurry whenever they need to, without wasting hours agitating it beforehand. It also reduced the workload massively! The traditional tractor agitation method involves letting a crust form on the slurry, and this is where everything can go wrong if you’re not careful!
Reduction of Running and Labour Costs
As our products are automated it becomes easy to prioritise your labour and time for other important tasks on your farm. This means there will be no labourer required to manually scrape the slurry, or wait around agitating slurry. Our bespoke system is already performing this task to such a high degree of efficiency no human needs to be involved in the action, other than initially programming the times for operation.
Therefore you won’t have to pay your workers to do this task and instead they can be organised to work on other more important tasks such as feeding livestock and bedding. This will reduce your labour costs as well as the running cost of your farm. Another example of cost reduction is our Eco-Clean Rope Scraper system. Usually, this type of system requires two winch units to be installed in your housing unit, but we have created a patented unique double-direction drum that goes both ways! Thus avoiding the need for more than one winch unit to be installed in your building ensures this will save you money as you won’t need to invest in two winch units, as our unique single winch performs both functions flawlessly
Reduction of Labour Work Load
The key point to note with automated scrapers is that they need to be programmed to operate at intervals that will ensure slurry levels are kept to a minimum within the housing.
Due to the fact that our systems are automated, this means that you do not need to assign the relentless task of scraping slurry to farm workers. Therefore it reduces the labour workload on your farm, allowing you to focus on much more important tasks. These other tasks can then be done during the time slurry removal would normally occur.
Without the use of automated scrapers, this will result in a higher volume of slurry which has to be moved, a deep wave of slurry into which the cattle are forced to step as the scraper moves towards them. This instantly nullifies all attempts there may have been to prevent the spread of infection and disease.
And the job isn’t finished when the scraper arrives at the slats at the end of the passageways. Almost inevitably, due to straw or solidified muck, there will be a build-up of slurry over these slats which will then create a pool for cows to wade through. Ensuring slurry is able to flow freely through slats is time well spent. Our class-leading products can avoid all of these pitfalls and assist you in optimising your farm tasks by streamlining these processes in order to run your farm as efficiently as possible.
Our Class-Leading Slurry Technology
Dairypower provides several slurry technology solutions for all of your slurry management requirements. To keep slurry moving in housing, passageways and their living areas we offer our scraper systems in the form of our Pro-Clean Ratchet Scraper System and Eco-Clean Rope Scraper System. We also provide one of the best solutions for the safest management of slurry. This is our Smart Slurry Aeration System.
Find Out More
Learn about all of our Beef Slurry Solutions with our exceptional products. To find out more about our cutting-edge industry-leading slurry management solutions please visit our website at www.dairypower.com and book a demonstration via our website.