Did not know they piled it that high.


Up in the morning, out on the job.

My first customer, a load of turkey litter.

About $8000 worth.

$8k for two dumptruck loads of turkey crap?
Damn, the coal miners around here would have a stroke.

That is a lot more than two loads, enough for 70 acres of corn.

What's the ton/acre spread rate? Average NPK after drying?

Ole, I'll have to get back to you. What I like about manure is the organic matter it gives. Back at Iowa State, one of the few things I learned was, a pound of organic matter, holds two pounds of water, There are trace elements not in N. P. or K.

Same kind of thing we are trying to accomplish with cover crops instead of fallow.

295 tons of the turkey litter. 3 ton an acre spread rate.

I'll say one thing.It sure is flat there.I'd get lost

it looks flatter in pictures. You want to block wheels on wagons!

We used to figure Broiler Litter at 2/3/2. I don't think turkey is near as strong on the N.

Back in the day we would compost it and feed it to cattle. At $10.00 a ton and mixed with rice bran it was pretty cheap feed.

Lots of chicken litter spread here. Although it makes good fertilizer, it stinks to high heaven. Several years ago, a farmer spread a bunch on a field, and the litter contained a bunch of dead chickens. Every buzzard and vulture within 50 miles must have smelled it, because the field was covered in them. Looked like blackbirds there were so many. I have never seen that many in one area in my life. I always support farmers, because I'm one myself, but I hate that smell.

Chicken litter is "hotter", higher in N, here, turkey is easier to get. We have the litter spread, and try to work in in as soon as we can.

A lot of the odor is ammonia, the nitrogen.

How many end dump loads to make 295T?

Mike, I pushed up five loads, then Jake took over. I'm guessing, 12, or so?

That's a lotta .......stuff!

Spread over eighty acres, it's not that much Mike.

We used to figure on working cattle manure in fairly quick to keep N loss down. You could sure tell the difference in the crops for a few years between the fields closer to the barn than those a few miles away. Heaped up spreader wasn't all that welcome on some of the public roads, 14 mph tractor speed made the further fields more trouble than they were worth. This was much fresher than what's in your pictures.

Years ago, an older gentleman in the community had a small garden, about 30'x30', I'm guessing. Anyway, he put a pu load of chicken litter on it and tilled it in. Planted his seeds.... and waited. It was so 'hot' nothing came up. The grass wouldn't even grow.... bare earth all summer long. He removed and replaced the top 6"-8" of soil and had a garden the next year.

The spot the pile is on will not grow anything till the next year.

get your coyote rifle out and handy

Coworker of mine and a college buddy contemplated going in on a long established chicken farm when they graduated. On paper it looked possible, but they decided to pass. Next buyer in line picked the place up, and mined a barn sized pile of chicken sh-t making enough in a year to pay the place off about 3 times. Then he subsequently sold it for development. Some of us just don't recognize a gold mine when we see one. Had they jumped on it, both could have retired a year after graduating.

Real common here since fertilizer got unbelievably high a few years ago. I always heard that ammonia fertilizer went up and down with natural gas prices, but that proved to be untrue. It did not come back down near as much as the natural gas ratio would dictate. You will see piles of chicken schit everywhere. The farmers also like the soil building that the manure does compared to pellet fertilizer. Most farmers here had never used manure before the big price hike as they were too young, but I can remember when near all fertilizer used was manure. Of course the crops were not making near what they do now for lots of reasons, but we did not have the fertilizer available like today. One thing about these modern farmers, they are on top of how to increase yields. Too bad they will not slow down the combine and quit running so much out the back. Get a rain on a cut corn field and it is unbelievable how much grain is out there. It sprouts and you can really see it. miles