Farming Questions and Answers

[Memento Mori]

A thread to ask questions about farming, especially for the non-farmers like me. Most of what I know about farming is from playing Farming Simulator and from following several Irish farmers on Youtube, mainly IFarm WeFarm (small dairy farm in Cavan) and Farmer Phil (midlands beef/some arable/contractor) and of course having watched Clarksons Farm. I have loads of questions, the answers to which are probably blindingly obvious to country folk...

I get how slatted tanks work for slurry, basically, the waste goes directly into the tank. But I see loads of farms don't have slatted sheds, but have big slurry reservoirs. How do they work? The sheds are bedded with straw or whatever aren't they? Is the whole lot just gathered and chucked into the pit or what happens?

[Memento Mori]

I have another one... is silage better than hay for cattle, or is it just that making silage is not as weather-dependent?

[CelticRambler]

I have another one... is silage better than hay for cattle, or is it just that making silage is not as weather-dependent?

Don't know where our professional farmers have got to - must all be off on their holidays - so I'll answer this one.

'Tis "much of a muchness" to a certain extent. Overall hay has several nutritional advantages over silage, but only if it's properly cut and saved. In an Irish climate, that's quite a challenge, and it's easier to reliably make large amounts of good quality silage than large amounts of good quality hay. On the other hand, if you can make good quality hay, it's a lot easier to store it for extended periods of time without it losing it nutritional qualities; silage can be temperamental, and contaminants (such as a clod of earth, or rodents scooped up in the harvest) or tears in the plastic can lead to it spoiling quite quickly.

Because silage is fermented, it's typically more digestible than hay. However that's not necessarily a good thing: the combination of a more finely chopped grass (+/- other stuff) plus this digestibility means that livestock are more likely to eat more of it without necessarily being properly sated. Think of the classic image of a cow sitting in a field, contentedly chewing the cud - that's an essential part of normal ruminant physiology, but is not needed if she eats silage. Cattle (and other grass-eaters) also like to root around in their food to find the tastiest shoots; hay gives them the chance to do that (even if they're unlikely to find much variety), whereas silage is pretty boring - the bovine equivalent of processed food.

In my part of the world, silage has been largely replaced by haylage, which retains most of the nutritional and psychological benefits of hay while allowing for a faster, less weather dependent harvest.

If the wellie-wearers don't put in an appearance beforehand, I'll answer the slurry question in the next day or two.

[Memento Mori]

Don't know where our professional farmers have got to - must all be off on their holidays - so I'll answer this one.

'Tis "much of a muchness" to a certain extent. Overall hay has several nutritional advantages over silage, but only if it's properly cut and saved. In an Irish climate, that's quite a challenge, and it's easier to reliably make large amounts of good quality silage than large amounts of good quality hay. On the other hand, if you can make good quality hay, it's a lot easier to store it for extended periods of time without it losing it nutritional qualities; silage can be temperamental, and contaminants (such as a clod of earth, or rodents scooped up in the harvest) or tears in the plastic can lead to it spoiling quite quickly.

Because silage is fermented, it's typically more digestible than hay. However that's not necessarily a good thing: the combination of a more finely chopped grass (+/- other stuff) plus this digestibility means that livestock are more likely to eat more of it without necessarily being properly sated. Think of the classic image of a cow sitting in a field, contentedly chewing the cud - that's an essential part of normal ruminant physiology, but is not needed if she eats silage. Cattle (and other grass-eaters) also like to root around in their food to find the tastiest shoots; hay gives them the chance to do that (even if they're unlikely to find much variety), whereas silage is pretty boring - the bovine equivalent of processed food.

In my part of the world, silage has been largely replaced by haylage, which retains most of the nutritional and psychological benefits of hay while allowing for a faster, less weather dependent harvest.

If the wellie-wearers don't put in an appearance beforehand, I'll answer the slurry question in the next day or two.

Thanks, that's really interesting, especially about the digestibility.

[CelticRambler]

Hmm. Still no sign of the rural brethern ... so, as promised:

I get how slatted tanks work for slurry, basically, the waste goes directly into the tank. But I see loads of farms don't have slatted sheds, but have big slurry reservoirs. How do they work? The sheds are bedded with straw or whatever aren't they? Is the whole lot just gathered and chucked into the pit or what happens?

This one is something of an "all kinds of everything" answer, and varies not only according to the livestock kept, the features of the legacy housing available, recent investments in stock and/or technology, and changes in local rural socio-economics. At its simplest, a slurry tank/pit is giant bucket in which to store sloppy waste; for humans, we'd call it a cesspit.

Like with ourselves, that sloppy waste arises directly from keeping animals in a unnatural environment, so urine and faeces are deposited continually in the "living quarters". If there's no way for the liquid part of the waste to be absorbed rapidly and effectively by the ground underfoot, then it has to go somewhere else. This is the case where animals are housed in yards and sheds with concrete floors, so some measure has to be put in place to clear the waste as efficiently as possible. Slatted floors are one way of giving the waste somewhere to go (from where it then drains and/or is scraped towards a holding tank), but it can be as simple as canting the floor towards the front of the stalls so that the liquid/semi-liquid waste runs into an animal-free channel, allowing the farmer to hose it towards the holding tank. The same applies to the yards where dairy cows wait to enter the milking parlour, and the parlour itself. You'll understand that all that cleaning adds a lot more liquid to the waste than was present originally, so you'll see more slurry management facilities on farms that have - or have had - a dairy herd. There's a huge range of pipes, pumps, scrapers and other bits and bobs available to make any system you want!

The alternative to concrete floors is one or other variation on the theme of a deep litter system. These are far more commonly used for chickens and horses (based on woodshavings rather than straw), but work as well for cattle, sheep and goats. The key word here is "deep" which governs the absorbability of the litter layer. If it's deep enough (or, to put it another way, the shed is not overcrowded) then there'll be no liquid run-off, and no need to clear out the shed until the livestock are put out to pasture ... if they are! Additional straw can be added throughout the period of housing to keep the upper surface - and the animals that lie on it - relatively clean, which maintains its absorptive properties. On a farm where livestock are housed in such a facility overwinter, purely to be fed and monitored, there'd be no need for a slurry tank, but some kind of a holding area will still be needed to keep the litter/manure mix in one place until it can be spread on a field. This might be in an old silage pit, if the farmer has switched to haylage or bagged silage, or simply be dumped into a trailer to be hauled away as soon as convenient.

In recent times, there's been some interest in extracting more than the fertiliser value from this waste, so some farms have built/installed biogas generators, for which (again) the waste needs to be stored in some kind of holding tank. So unless you're actually walking the land and talking to the farmer, it could be difficult to know if any particular farm was actively using a slurry tank in the traditional way, was re-using an obsolete silage pit for "muck" or had built a holding tank for a biogas plant.

That's the overview ... you've stirred up happy memories of mucking out and spreading straw! I might have to ask Santa to bring me a few sheep ...

[kadman]

Hey CR, you have just confirmed something I have long suspected..............you know far more about bullshit, than you do about Ducato mechanics

[CelticRambler]

Possibly due,in part, to a formal (and practical) education in the former, but nothing more than an internet apprenticeship in the latter

Though I still know that the Ducato hubcap should be replaced in such a way as to leave the tyre's valve accessible through the fekkin cut-out. unlike a surprising number of trained mechanics ...

[JONJO THE MISER]

When are fresh turkeys that you order in a butchers killed?
Do they all come from just a few suppliers?

[765489]

When are fresh turkeys that you order in a butchers killed?
Do they all come from just a few suppliers?

Check out this man. Would love to try a turkey from him. All outdoor and given a varied diet.



A friend if mine used to rear about 10k turkeys every year. He sometimes ask me if I was free to give him a hand. I always had the excuse ready. No way would I be spending a day plucking turkeys.

Seems to be plenty of small suppliers about for turkeys.

[765489]

That's the overview ... you've stirred up happy memories of mucking out and spreading straw! I might have to ask Santa to bring me a few sheep ...

I cleared out over a hundred tons of cow manure out of a shed for a neighbour there earlier this year. I can confirm I used to have happy memories too but these are gone now after that day.

[Memento Mori]

Hmm. Still no sign of the rural brethern ... so, as promised:



This one is something of an "all kinds of everything" answer, and varies not only according to the livestock kept, the features of the legacy housing available, recent investments in stock and/or technology, and changes in local rural socio-economics. At its simplest, a slurry tank/pit is giant bucket in which to store sloppy waste; for humans, we'd call it a cesspit.

Like with ourselves, that sloppy waste arises directly from keeping animals in a unnatural environment, so urine and faeces are deposited continually in the "living quarters". If there's no way for the liquid part of the waste to be absorbed rapidly and effectively by the ground underfoot, then it has to go somewhere else. This is the case where animals are housed in yards and sheds with concrete floors, so some measure has to be put in place to clear the waste as efficiently as possible. Slatted floors are one way of giving the waste somewhere to go (from where it then drains and/or is scraped towards a holding tank), but it can be as simple as canting the floor towards the front of the stalls so that the liquid/semi-liquid waste runs into an animal-free channel, allowing the farmer to hose it towards the holding tank. The same applies to the yards where dairy cows wait to enter the milking parlour, and the parlour itself. You'll understand that all that cleaning adds a lot more liquid to the waste than was present originally, so you'll see more slurry management facilities on farms that have - or have had - a dairy herd. There's a huge range of pipes, pumps, scrapers and other bits and bobs available to make any system you want!

The alternative to concrete floors is one or other variation on the theme of a deep litter system. These are far more commonly used for chickens and horses (based on woodshavings rather than straw), but work as well for cattle, sheep and goats. The key word here is "deep" which governs the absorbability of the litter layer. If it's deep enough (or, to put it another way, the shed is not overcrowded) then there'll be no liquid run-off, and no need to clear out the shed until the livestock are put out to pasture ... if they are! Additional straw can be added throughout the period of housing to keep the upper surface - and the animals that lie on it - relatively clean, which maintains its absorptive properties. On a farm where livestock are housed in such a facility overwinter, purely to be fed and monitored, there'd be no need for a slurry tank, but some kind of a holding area will still be needed to keep the litter/manure mix in one place until it can be spread on a field. This might be in an old silage pit, if the farmer has switched to haylage or bagged silage, or simply be dumped into a trailer to be hauled away as soon as convenient.

In recent times, there's been some interest in extracting more than the fertiliser value from this waste, so some farms have built/installed biogas generators, for which (again) the waste needs to be stored in some kind of holding tank. So unless you're actually walking the land and talking to the farmer, it could be difficult to know if any particular farm was actively using a slurry tank in the traditional way, was re-using an obsolete silage pit for "muck" or had built a holding tank for a biogas plant.

That's the overview ... you've stirred up happy memories of mucking out and spreading straw! I might have to ask Santa to bring me a few sheep ...

Really interesting thanks. That makes perfect sense.

This guy here doesn't have any slurry at all and just beds and digs it out. Kadman you'd like this guy I think he does some good mechanical work on old tractors. In this video, he cleans out his barn.



So were the shed is not slatted, either the concrete is scraped regularly into a tank, is "lightly" bedded and the "run off" goes into the slurry tank, or it is bedded deep enough that there is no run off hence no slurry. Got it