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Suggested N P K application rates?

  • 03-05-2013 8:45am
    #1
    kowtow
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,135 ✭✭✭


    Thought I'd pick a few brains for a sensible rate at which to put a little late fertiliser out.

    We bought this ground late in the season and have not soil tested yet. Cattle were grazed out until Mid January (long story...) leaving ground red, but thankfully not too badly poached. Luckily for the moment we are very lightly stocked (i.e. below 1LU / h). Land is productive dairy/tillage although steep in places.

    We were able to close the more harvestable side of the grass for silage at the beginning of April, after a brief grazing for a few hours each day, at which point we put out slurry on the closed area. This part is now growing fairly well from a very low base. I'm expecting a low-ish yield of fairly good quality bale silage from a first cut hopefully cut Mid June.

    Meanwhile our handful of dairy cattle are grazing tight cells for a few hours a day on the side we left open and which got no slurry - growth has picked up and if anything is getting a little bit ahead of them.. they're a bit less than half way through this ground in the last two weeks, so we're hoping to be able to continue rotating them on it if growth continues... as they are in poor condition and suckling calves they're getting ration with hay & straw in the evening and coming in at night.

    1. What's the maximum (bags/acre) I should put on silage ground if I want to be able to cut in Mid June, and also keep the option of sending cattle back onto some of it if they run out of grass.. and

    2. How much should we put out on grazing area, behind (& or in front?) of the cattle and how soon can they re-graze it? The grazing area was grazed until January but got no other slurry.

    Thanks in advance - P


Comments

  • #2
    Farmer Pudsey
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,326 ✭✭✭Farmer Pudsey


    If you want to cut the silage groung mid june we will presume that nearly all nitrogen that was in the slurry is used up. If you spread in the next few days you will have about 40 days to harvest so on old pasture it will use about 1.8 units of nitrogen/day from now on. From this you could put out 72 units of nitrogen. P&K will depend on slurry applied if you put 2K gallons/acre you will need P&K so cut sward may be best option, if you went heavy on slurry 4Kgallons/acre+ can is all you need. About 2.5 bags/acre of either if you feld that P&K was low you could replace the 1/2 bag with 10.10.20. If you wanted the option of grazing it you can split the application spread 1/2 now and the rest in 2 weeks time

    On the grazing it depends on if you think that you require P&K. 20 units of nitrogen will give the grass a spurt but also allow you to graze after about 8-10 days idealy. If short of P&K use a bag of 18.6.12/acre at the time or if you think that you are really short use 2 bags 10.10.20/acre and then CAN.I presume because of slope on field slurry is not an option


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