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Nova Scotia,Canada | Hey all i just got thinking about manure storage and was wondering if you could scrape a dairy barn manure and add it to heifer manure mixed with shavings and straw or is there still to much liquid matter in the dairy manure. |
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north-central Indiana west of Fulton | Are you thinking of days or months of storage,JD, and how many cows ? We have a 50 x50 slab with portable walls on 3 sides that will hold a weeks worth for 70-80 cows from our freestall barn. It can be quit runny alot of the time,but didn't want to go the liquid route for our size operation. Have let cows tear up a big bale of straw or poor hay in front of barn (if we have it) to thicken some. Best to watch weather and not get caught full of manure with a rainy spell.
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whitesville new york | dave i am curious about your manure storage. could you post some more pics. i am more thinking about a months worth for a 50-60 cow herd |
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north-central Indiana west of Fulton | Yongfarmer,I only have 1 other picture on computer (can get more with manure in it if you want), but it is a pretty basic setup.The barn is 104' wide and the storage area starts at one edge and covers not quite half the face of the barn.There is 30' of cement between barn and storage area sloped 5" toward storage & also sloped some 90 degrees to that (not sure exact amount). The storage slab slopes 3" from back to front so rain can get away. If the entire front of barn had storage it would be better. We back spreader through gates on end and park on that 30' area of cement between barn and storage area.
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whitesville new york | Your system looks fairly simply. Thanks for the explination. I don't know of any storage around here that is not liquid. The neighbor and I would like to do something similar to your set up so we don't have to hire it done or buy equipment. |
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cental pa along the Susquehanna River | youngfarmer I have a neighbor down here that has 60-70 cows and he just put in manure storage. He put up a building with poured walls and he has his gutter cleaner dropping the manure in the building. He also has a feed alley he scrapes manure into the building. I can get some pics if you like and find out how many weeks of manure it will hold and size. |
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Faunsdale, AL | You need to decide which you will do, either go liquid or go "dry". Sounds like you may already have some equipment for dry?
We have a single slinger spreader which can do some of both, but mostly tanks for liquid. I would like to get another old solid spreader going again just because hauling dry is a lot more efficient when we actually have manure that's dry.
The problem is when it's not stiff enough to load quickly and still too stiff to pump. That's not a problem for long, we have lagoon next to the solid separator pits to "soup" it up as needed to get it to pump right.
Rainfall changes the plan sometimes!
I've seen the pits with roof over, and I think all you get out of that is not to have to haul/contain the rain water too. |
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Chilliwack BC | Here, that wouldn't work and it would still be way too liquid to stack and scoop. Why not have a pit you can agitate and pump for the free stall manure and a dry pile for the bedding pack? Use concrete lock blocks for the pile as you can easily make it taller or longer. I also wouldn't plan for any less that 6 months of storage. |
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Nova Scotia,Canada | yeah i am just trying to gather some ideas as i do not have a farm yet but i am trying to focus on dairy farming. |
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frederick, MD | I saw a guy around here who had a stack pad simliar to that on. But then below that he had an inground liquid tank. So he would stack the manure and iwhat was too wet woul run off into the liquid pit. He said the liquid pit normally had very few soilds in it so hewould just have a vac truck suck it out and haul it close. Looked like a good deal |
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Nebraska | Here is one that I took a picture of that slopes to the back then the excess liquid drains off into a concrete pit that is pumped once a year or so.
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Kingston,Mi | I had the chance to design a similar containment (someone else agreed to the basic design then retired), the farmer had his milking cattle in a sand bedded loose housing and of course the manure is quite fluid. He also had young cattle and dry cows in a straw bedded barn. His solution was to build a dam with the straw bedded manure and scoup the more liquid manure over the wall behind the dam. Installed a 18 inch pipe and valve in the far end to access the liquid manure in a small pump chamber.
He had previously dammed up a portion of the barnyard with straw pack manure and stored the liquid inside the ring.
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Kaukauna WI | I dont' understand. Why don't you just make it all liquid and haul it out once a year WHEN IT IS LIKELY TO DO THE MOST GOOD? |
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whitesville new york | Cousinit I know you guys hire custom guys to do a lot of your field work. We do all our own stuff. I will give you a short list of why I want to stay with solid or semisolid manure.
1 we would have to buy a bigger tractor a different spreader and a pump
2 it would tie up a lot of time when the nice weather is here. Some years are less than ideal to spread.
3 it seam that a lot of fuel is wasted on agitating and hauling water.
4 everyone that I have talked to about my size in this area are not overly thrilled with liquid.
That is just my opinion on the matter. I know all operations are different and might not work in another area of the country. Some of you guys have show some really neat ideas though.
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Athens, Ga | do you have a pic of it empty? |
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Faunsdale, AL | Watch out for any kind of 'weeping wall' design that is supposed to let the liquids go through and hold back the solids.
Unless you are flushing large amounts of water through that kind of system AND it has wide slots, like 1" or 1-1/2", it is going to just clog up and all the liquid is staying in the pit. This can work if you're flushing every day. Not so good if you flush every couple of days, not at all if you scrape and the only water you get is rain.
Scraped manure does not separate well, but with a lot of water included, some sort of slime or mucus is broken down and it's possible to get it to turn loose of the liquid. Of course by that time, you have increased the volume 10X! The trade off is pumping instead of loader bucket, but like you said, hauling dry is a lot more efficient when you can.
Now if that concrete pit shown above has a valve in it that is used to manually drain off the accumulated liquid into the second pit, them MAYBE it will work. IF the pipe and valve large diameter and are easily accessable to rod out when they clog. A large air compressor (100 CFM or larger) is really handy for unclogging pipes in manure handling systems! Just glue together some PVC pipe, 3/4" diameter or so and hook the air hose to one end, push it into the clog and turn on the air. Probe back and forth in the area of the clog..........something will let loose somewhere! This works best when you have liquid trying to run through the pipe to flush out the remining clog when you get it started.
Edited by ccjersey 4/4/2012 09:09
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Kaukauna WI | If you went all liquid, you wouldn't need to buy ANY tractor, yongfarmer. We rent a tractor 2 days a year for agitating. Sometimes it seems like we're hauling a lot of water, but in a droughty year that's all the better. We spend one day in the spring hauling, two days in the fall. Very little time spent on emptying the pit for a 190 cow herd.
We would not do it any other way. It's on the short list of the few things we did right. |
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whitesville new york | Cousinit just curious what does it cost you a year to have all that hauled. I know you must have multible trucks or use a drag line to move that much in that short of time. I know a fellow that has a truck come in for 3-5 days and spread his buy this spring he hauled a lot with his 3000gallon spreader. On top of that I would have to add a lot of water to make my cow manure work much less my manure pack pens. |
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West central IL | They dont make you cover it to keep rain water off? |
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Kaukauna WI | Big Pig, who is that question directed to?
yongfarmer, I'm not saying our way is the best for all folks, but it is the best for our situation, and I would do it all over again versus any of the other methods described above, just because we only have to worry about it twice a year (once a year if we had less cows, it was meant for once a year hauling originally)........we spend about $15k a year on hauling. We own nothing. I would say half the time we do the drag line thing. Obviously that is way cheaper than trucking, but some of our fields are 5 miles away. And the hauling gets done mostly in the fall, after corn is off, so that is the right time to do it. We empty about half the pit again in the spring, that is our fault for not making the pit bigger and/or having too many cows for what the pit was meant for. So for 190 cows, that's about $80 a cow/year. I have no idea how that compares to other methods. But our manure is never spread on frozen ground and it is knifed in or worked under immediately, so lose very little nitrogen that way. |
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whitesville new york | Thanks for so actual numbers. I know that's the best way to keep all the nutrients in the ground. Also another thing i have that you don't is I use a lot of pasture. With nice winter the cows have spent a lot of time out side. This decreases my manure hauling greatly. Cows are only in the barn nights and in 6 to 8 weeks they will only be in the barn for milking. It would be nice to be able to store about a months worth of manure here in a couple weeks when we need to wait on hay fields to spread on but we probably won plant corn to early this year because we are going to use a 80 day variety. It is always a game of ifs in my opinion. But things always work out 1 way or another. |
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Kaukauna WI | Yes, you are right, we have zero pasture. So we have to collect all the manure 365 days a year from every animal on our place so we put in one good system and be done with it. We do have to start up the tractor to empty the reception pit into the manure pit once a week. That tractor only leaves that PTO shaft to fill up with fuel and pull people out of they get stuck. And to haul silage waste. |
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Manure storage
