Fertiliser for Grazing - what do you do?

neilo · May 23, 2016

Grouse said:
This is what's foxing me,

In college we were taught :

Grazing = Nitram ok
silage or hay = either compound fertiliser or FYM + Nitram

I appreciate fully I was in college over 30 years ago and I should be doing soil tests, but as everything seems ok and loads of grazing I want to keep soil fertility and levels level. I just wondered if anyone was doing it as I was and using just N for grazing...

Unless your indices are on the floor, you won't be taking any appreciable amount of K off with grazing only, but you will be taking some P out. If you take a hay/silage crop off, you remove a hell of a lot of K (which is why it's high in slurry/FYM), so will need to replace it somehow to avoid depletion.

I am low in P&K here, after decades of nought going on, so apply a cwt/ac of 0:24:24 to grazing only blocks, just as a maintenance dressing. Looking at going to just putting a small dose of P (as TSP?) on in the Spring in future, with a dose of MOP on the odd fields that get mown.

Getting pH right will make a lot of soil P more available too (& N efficiency) in case that's an issue.

hillman · May 23, 2016

Generally bag and half of 18-6-12 then next 24-2.5-5plus sulphur , p low going out also with 23-10-0
Across all ground , silage gets slurry and dung alternating dung around remainder of grazing ground to build up indices and organic matter, ground has improved vastly since I've more dung to spread

Jez Agronomist · May 23, 2016

Also worth remembering that if relying on P and K from grazing animals that deposition is an uneven mosaic. Manure patches which contain almost all the P only cover 10% and urine patches containing most of the K only cover 50% so there are areas deficient in between.

neilo · May 23, 2016

Jez Agronomist said:
Also worth remembering that if relying on P and K from grazing animals that deposition is an uneven mosaic. Manure patches which contain almost all the P only cover 10% and urine patches containing most of the K only cover 50% so there are areas deficient in between.

But surely it would average out over time?

exmoor dave · May 24, 2016

Soil test everything on a 3 yr rotation.
75kg ac of N-S-S spring and autumn on grazing ground at home.
P&K generally good

On other farm P&K is difficult to maintain
So usually 75-100kg ac of something like 20-8-14 +s on grazing spring and mid summer
And 100-150kg ac of same on cutting spring,
Dung for after cut

More to life · May 24, 2016

Regular soil tests and never believe anything someone who sells fertilizer tells you. My soil test just sit at 3&4 I haven't put compound on for 10+ years. I lime as an when and do see positive results with sulphur in cereals so the balance of my double top gets rotated around the grass ground . Lots of slurry to spread and I'm lucky to have mainly nice dirt

harperfarmer · May 24, 2016

Currently don't apply anything to grazing land and only just being able to convince the old man of the importance of replacing P and K after silage/hay cuts. All the grazing is high in clover which helps regarding the N, and increasing stock numbers now so have a lot more FYM to spread around the farm. P and K's are woefully short but slowly trying to build. The irony being that around this time of year we start to get too much grass, the lambs are being sold, ewes get tightened up = excess grazing. The cattle do use a fair bit of it but still end up with more grass than needed. We could up stock numbers but housing at lambing/calving time limits that option. The problem being with all enterprises having pretty tight/ nonexistent margins, now isn't really the time to be pushing the case for upping indices with bagged compound......

Poorbuthappy · May 24, 2016

neilo said:
But surely it would average out over time?

Particularly with a short rotation grazing system.
Set stock and we've all seen sheep lie at the top of the field and huge concentration of dung in those areas whilst poorer parts of the field are left neglected, and left to get poorer.

Bossfarmer · May 24, 2016

harperfarmer said:
Currently don't apply anything to grazing land and only just being able to convince the old man of the importance of replacing P and K after silage/hay cuts. All the grazing is high in clover which helps regarding the N, and increasing stock numbers now so have a lot more FYM to spread around the farm. P and K's are woefully short but slowly trying to build. The irony being that around this time of year we start to get too much grass, the lambs are being sold, ewes get tightened up = excess grazing. The cattle do use a fair bit of it but still end up with more grass than needed. We could up stock numbers but housing at lambing/calving time limits that option. The problem being with all enterprises having pretty tight/ nonexistent margins, now isn't really the time to be pushing the case for upping indices with bagged compound......

do you not apply any N either to grazing ground? what does everyone put on their grazing and how many applications? 100 units N once in spring and once in Autumn?

Johngee · May 24, 2016

I've been using quite a bit of CAN over recent years - it's fairly cheap and it's got some Ca in it so handy on rented ground where I don't want to spend money on lime. But have been worried by effect on P and K.
Tested a couple of fields last winter that have had only CAN for 4-5 years and no lime for 15-18 years. pH were 6.1 and 6.2, P index was 2 on one field, 4 on the other, but K was only 1 on both. So I think an application of potash will be needed this autumn, not yet sure how atm.

harperfarmer · May 24, 2016

Bossfarmer said:
do you not apply any N either to grazing ground? what does everyone put on their grazing and how many applications? 100 units N once in spring and once in Autumn?

Nope not to grazing land. The thing is we creep our lambs and feed our ewes when turned out in Feb. Even if we put N on its too cold for grass growth. By the time grass would respond to N we're selling a lot of lambs and tightening sheep up so don't require it. We don't save by not putting N on as we have to feed the ewes, it's just we wouldn't see any benefit due to our lambing timing etc. Arguably it would be more profitable to lamb later use less food and put N on to maximise grass useage. But wouldn't suit our system. We don't need N for cattle grazing as we can just thin them across the sheep grazing later in the season.

Bossfarmer · May 24, 2016

We have a few grazing fields just now not had fert on yet and only got enough grazing for about 0.5 cows to the acre

Coximus · May 24, 2016

I had some fields coming up at index 1 for P & K and have got them up to 2 now by using them as my winter feeding fields - theyre too rocky and rough to plough and re-seed so this their natural use.
The combined 11 acres gets about £200 of hay fed on it each winter... the difference has been a doubleing of grass growth in 2 years, from feed I needed to buy anyway.
Worth considering where you feed if your buying in food, as your buying in P & K./

Edit - the £200 was 4 tonnes of mid qualityish hay.

More to life · May 24, 2016

Coximus said:
I had some fields coming up at index 1 for P & K and have got them up to 2 now by using them as my winter feeding fields - theyre too rocky and rough to plough and re-seed so this their natural use.
The combined 11 acres gets about £200 of hay fed on it each winter... the difference has been a doubleing of grass growth in 2 years, from feed I needed to buy anyway.
Worth considering where you feed if your buying in food, as your buying in P & K./

I like your thinking. This must have an influence here to.

Coximus · May 24, 2016

It was a neighbout who suggested it - Pointing out its bascially fertilizer you can feed - so you get 60% of the fertilizer for the money, but 100% of the food your buying... so think of it like 160%....

Another one worth doing is finding local riding stables - I found one that was paying £140 a month to have their muck taken away........ I said I'll do it for diesel if they load the trailer...... bit my hand off - and now thats once a month 14 tonnes of muck in a pile, let it rot a couple of years and spread.

If you look around you can find good sources of PK for small acerages

jackrussell101 · May 25, 2016

We start the season off in February spreading 75kg/ha Nitram on grazing and silage ground for the first round. Second round for silage ground is 250kg/ha Nitram and then no more until after first cut then same again. Grazing ground gets 125kg/ha monthly till the end of the season September time-ish.

All FYM is exported to local arable farmer on a muck/maize deal. All slurry spread at home farm, grazing ground gets plastered in the Autumn, and silage ground gets plastered in February and then hopefully after 1st and 2nd cuts. We have not spread P and K for two years now and soil test the farm with ACT bi annually and haven't found any P or K deficiencies however we have in the past and have had to rectify it by spreading some. Only thing we occasionally get short of is sulphur and looking in to spreading a product called Brimstone 90 which is a straight sulphur product whereas in the past we've spread a compound product with P and K and sulphur in. Just trying to watch every penny we can in these challenging times!

Bossfarmer · May 25, 2016

What part of the country are you in? We find it a waste of time here putting fert on in feb its too cold to do anything

Colin6080 · May 25, 2016

In the spring all fields got 70 units of Urea before April with the silage fields getting 5000 gallons of slurry.
At the moment we are following the cows with a bag and a half of 18-6-12 after grazing. Fits in with our rotation length of around 20 days.

When the silage ground was closed it got 3 bags of 0-7-30 and I think it got around 70 units of urea. Not 100% sure on the N here because it wasn't me who spread it

jackrussell101 · May 25, 2016

Bossfarmer said:
What part of the country are you in? We find it a waste of time here putting fert on in feb its too cold to do anything

West Midlands. Too cold here also but got to be the first one to do it. We've even put it on when there's snow on the ground.

Sheep92 · May 25, 2016

We put on bag and a half 25 2.5 5 to the acre round paddys day across the whole farm and find it grows great grass for sheep

Fertiliser for Grazing - what do you do?

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