What Fertillizer for Silage Fields After Slurry

PN14

Hi Guys,

I was wondering could any of you advise me on what type and quantity of fertilizer you would reccommend for silage ground following application of slurry last week.

Our silage ground is a few miles from the home place and as such we have never spread slurry on it due partly to distance but usually because the land this time of year is too wet and also we have an open slurry tank and usually use side spreaders to empty in in august / september. However this year we with the land being dry we made a ramp up the outside of the slurry pit and got the pit agitated and partly emptied with vacumn tanks. We got this spread over the silage grounds at approx 4,000 gallons to the acre according to the contractor.

My question is what now should we be looking at applying to this ground in terms of fertilizer. We would always have applied something like 0-10-20 or 10-10-20 around this time with a later shake of CAN in early to mid April. We generally take first cut off the fields last week of may 1st week of June every year. I don't want to be spreading fertilizer for the sake of it but also want a good high quality crop for end of May.

As we have never spread slurry on the silage grounds before we have nothing to base our decision on so I'm here looking for a bit of advice.

leg wax

with 4000 gallons of slurry gone on ground i would go with 2 bags of urea as long as there was no lime spread in last 6 months

reilig

leg wax wrote: »

with 4000 gallons of slurry gone on ground i would go with 2 bags of urea as long as there was no lime spread in last 6 months

I agree with you leg wax. Putting on any other fertilizer would be a complete waste of money. The slurry spread at that level, the ground will have enough P and K to grow lots of grass, all it wants now is the N which is in abundance in Urea. 2 bags to the acre would be top notch for it and leave you with early meadow. Cut back on the bags per acre if you are thinking about silage in late June rather than early June.

Follow the Plan

Would Urea be suited to land that got 1000 gallons per acre, with Cut or Pasture sward planned to be spread in April?

Landys

I plan on putting 1000 to 2000gallons of slurry per acre now and 3 bags of cut sward per acre in 2 weeks for silage ground . But maybe that is too much according to some of the post on this thread?

leg wax

Landys wrote: »

I plan on putting 1000 to 2000gallons of slurry per acre now and 3 bags of cut sward per acre in 2 weeks for silage ground . But maybe that is too much according to some of the post on this thread?

you have a big diff between 1000 and 2000 gallons and 4000gallons of slurry as in k 30 units up to 120 units, if you are spreading the lower rate you will need 3 bags of cut sward and if it was me i would spread 4 bags of cut sward with the lower volume of slurry, after the wet years gone and the price of fert p+k levels are low and with grass scarse fodder gone dont give the grass any excuse not to grow