- Location
- Carmarthenshire, West Wales
I have no idea how it gets in the dung, maybe it is absorbed into the lambs skin?
Farming without bagged Fertiliser
- Thread starter happycows
- Start date
- Location
- Carmarthenshire, West Wales
I remember seeing a demo at the Royal Welsh Show, they had two jars of soil with Muck on the top, one also contained dung beetles the other none. At the end of the week, the one with beetles had no dung on the surface, all gone, the other all still there. I also heard, that when sheep were introduced to Australia, there were no dung beetles there for sheep muck, and flies became a great problem, so they introduced a species of dung beetle suitable for sheep muck. The dung beetles work by sucking out the liquid from the dung, this stops it being a habitat for flies, they then take the desiccated muck into the soil in burrows.
All porous are systemic go threw the skin and then go round the body.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
sh!t yes, they have so much information and so many resources . Yet "they never do anything for us".... yet, they have the answers to half the questions people ask their competitors TFF
Scholsey
Member
- Location
- Herefordshire
Haveing gone organic and changed the farm from being nitrogen dependant Pp to clover based three year rotation including a fourth year with a cereal break crop I can honestly say we have never grown so much fodder. I would look carefully at what wormers you use on stock as they carry through the dung/slurry and have big impact on soil health.
You can grow massive volumes of grub if FYM is applied at the right time and weather is on your side. And if the weather isn't just remember the grass dosnt grow any faster with a pile of N behind it in a draught or if it's freezing anyway, and you will forget about the fearful prices being said on here
spread last bagged fert in 2016 and think dropping wormers and fly treatments and growing 1-2kg of clover in new leys has helped us grow more grass than we did using 30t of AN on 240acres every year.
We've done various farmer trials with foliar urea and foliar k.
Very interesting results, not just yield reactions but quality (protein and me) uplifts with foliar.
Have grown 8 ton spring barley crop using 58kg N/ha but 2 foliar passes included in that.
Looking forward to the Welsh trial results being published
How did you cope with flys
How much n did you put on in each folier pass .
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Depends on the crop but between 4 and 10kg
Did you spray with conventional nozzels.
ShooTa
Member
- Location
- Denbighshire - In the vale of Clwyd!
theres some great resources for foliar sprays on youtube -
plenty of stuff around on both the biodynamic and korean natural farming aspects.
plenty of stuff around on both the biodynamic and korean natural farming aspects.
Yes just normal nozzles.
Anything to get the liquid to stay on the leaf, very simple process but pretty mind blowing when it works.
I have read it is 5 to 7 percent more efficient than spreading, what would you think the efficiency of this is in your view?
Scholsey
Member
- Location
- Herefordshire
Dont seem to be as much as a issue as they used to be, I don’t want to sound like a hippy but presume we have more things that eat fly larvae etc around.
I first learned about it at a Joel Williams meeting, he reckoned on efficiency being between 3 and 4x better with foliar. What we've done here agrees with that.
- Location
- God's side of the border.
If my sums are correct that would equate to around 105kg N per Ha, so no disrespect, but a good clover sward should provide more N than that amount of AN.
I do believe we will all be encouraged (forced) down this route in the future so the more knowledge/experience gained the better.
Scholsey
Member
- Location
- Herefordshire
sorry there would have been 60 acres of maize which wouldn’t have had any AN in that
- Location
- LINCOLNSHIRE/KENYA
He’s been to Kenya several times and we’ve been really impressed with his philosophy. We are all arable (Veg) but have taken on board a lot of what he says. Last year we grew 4000 acres of Veg and used an average of 33 kgs per acre of bought in fertilizer we use some muck but mainly we are cycling the nutrients. It’s all in the ground you’ve just got to get the roots to grab it.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
We used foliar N on a dairy combined with a Donaghy's product called 'LessN' (dicyandiamide) and it was even more responsive to that mix.
Just a simple urea/MgSO4 mix but by gaw did it grow some grass in a hurry
I could well believe it, some proper research into the quality improvements are required also that's the most exciting but for me. We've seen a 13% increase in grass ME yield with foliar k (sandy soil so no soil k) and 32% protein yield increase with foliar N and K.