Amount of fertilizer used

Grecco

I`ve been reading some of the posts about fertilizers and I`m stunned at the amount of fertilizer used:eek:.
I got 11 -13 bales per acre last year by spreading 1 bag of urea to the acre two weeks after slurry.
Heres the full picture.
Nov 21 cattle removed from silage ground.
Mid March Cattle returned until Early April
Early April 1500 gallons slurry per acre
mid April 1 bag of Urea per acre
Harvest 1st week of june at 11-13 bales per acre

After this I don't apply any more fertilizer, only graze the ground till November

reilig

Grecco wrote: »

I`ve been reading some of the posts about fertilizers and I`m stunned at the amount of fertilizer used:eek:.
I got 11 -13 bales per acre last year by spreading 1 bag of urea to the acre two weeks after slurry.
Heres the full picture.
Nov 21 cattle removed from silage ground.
Mid March Cattle returned until Early April
Early April 1500 gallons slurry per acre
mid April 1 bag of Urea per acre
Harvest 1st week of june at 11-13 bales per acre

After this I don't apply any more fertilizer, only graze the ground till November

I've been spreading 1 bag of urea per acre on top of slurry on my meadows for years. It gives a lovely crop of silage. However, my planner has advised based on soil samples that my main block of silage ground (33 acres in 3 fields) is desperately low on potash. For the last 10 years I been using the urea on top of slurry on this ground. While it is still growing a lot of grass, last years's crop was a little yellow rather than dark green. My planner suggests that this silage would be lacking in essential minerals and vitamins for my cattle and that I am getting a shorter growing season from my meadows and not getting the most from my aftergrass. While the he still recommends me putting out slurry (2000gal to the acre last week, my soil samples indicate that I sould be spreading 2 bags of 18-6-12 to the acre this year.

bob charles

You cant compare like with like about N usage. short term leys vs leys in the ground for years, high quality silage vs poor quality. Just because someone uses allot of N or very little N means nothing. I have seen 30kgs of N (bag and a third of Urea) put out for grazing. 0.75kgs of N can be used by an intensive grassland per day during peak growing season. I would consider my N usage to be on the lower side for the output.

I done a job for a friend spreading 180kilos of 18-6-12 per acre (3.5bags) on land that will shown no return as the grass was crap the field had much bigger problems than a shortage of NPK.

Bizzum

We used to get around 15 bales an acre easily enough when the little Welger balers were on the go!