Parlour Washings and other mildly contaminated water

[Devon lad]

Not really.

largish rotary x2/day washed in and out
Milk silo washed daily

There must be a way to reduce this, do you wash down your collection yard? 30m2 is way too much. Should put plate cooler water to feed hot water tanks and wash down hoses. I can wash down our 24/48 with under 2000L each milking, collecting yard tractor scrapped.

 

[vantage]

I am not sure what you get up to with a rotorainer, they last over 20 years here. The only problem we had was when we were unable to get smooth layflat and the rougher stuff kept twisting. We now use 50 mm blue MDPE, and if we need to take it across the road we have to block the road while we tow it across.

We have a 350m3 dirty water lagoon, which takes parlour washings, cheese factory washings and drainage, and contaminated rain water, with soakaways for uncontaminated rain water.

It is a system we have been using for well over 30 years with minor modifications without problems. Our herd is not large (110 in milk year round).

We use a progressive cavity pump from the lagoon to the rotorainer. We can pump from our digestate lagoon to the field digestate store, or swap hoses and pump dirty water to the rotorainer. Digestate lagoon shown, dirty water on the left.
View attachment 1007063

Does the suction pipe have a foot valve on it? My experience of mono pumps is that they soon lose the ability to suck up to prime, better pressure fed.

 

[vantage]

There must be a way to reduce this, do you wash down your collection yard? 30m2 is way too much. Should put plate cooler water to feed hot water tanks and wash down hoses. I can wash down our 24/48 with under 2000L each milking, collecting yard tractor scrapped.

Everyone I know with a rotary uses a lot of water.
30 cubes, 6600 gallons. 1” of rain on two acres is 54,000 gallons. Just over 1/10 of an inch when irrigated .

 

[Will Blackburn]

Store separate and umbilical whenever you need, plenty of capacity available in slurry ban season.

I would put another slurry tank up and mix as thin slurry is better for us, but this is not efficient for getting plant nutrition any distance away from home.

 

[Boysground]

Have the same problem here, really want to separate the washings from the slurry to reduce the nvz storage requirement. Not come up with a sensible solution yet but storage tank and rotor Rainer up there on the list of suggestions

Bg

 

[sjt01]

Does the suction pipe have a foot valve on it? My experience of mono pumps is that they soon lose the ability to suck up to prime, better pressure fed.

We have a little Landia centrifugal chopper pump at the foot of the suction hose, needed for the digestate because it tends to outgas when at the full depth of the lagoon. It is just strong enough to deliver to the progressive cavity pump. The digestate lagoon is about at the limit of suction.

 

[TomB]

Seem to collect plenty of dirty water here. Can be a 1000 cube a month, if plenty of rainfall. It all goes into plastic lined lagoons. Historically we spread with a rotor Rainer and more recently a K line. Now have our own umbilical set which allows us to spread it around the paddocks affordably and without making a mess like a tanker might. Always thought that there was very marginal nutrient value, took some samples last summer and it was better than I thought.
Can probably save an N application on cow paddocks where we have spread water.

 

[Bald Rick]

There must be a way to reduce this, do you wash down your collection yard? 30m2 is way too much. Should put plate cooler water to feed hot water tanks and wash down hoses. I can wash down our 24/48 with under 2000L each milking, collecting yard tractor scrapped.

One big issue with a rotary - or at least in our experience - is that as soon as it’s stopped, the cows crap. They also crap coming towards the “Off” . 161 cows can crap quite a bit which needs lot of water to shift. So much so, that we tend to run a volume hose on to the platform about from halfway through milking to the end.
Add in x2 internal wash and a silo wash and it comes to 30 cubes or so.

Yes, we run the plate cooler water to the wash down tank but use a heat exchanger off the snap chiller to pre warm heater water to 60 degs or so

 

[Devon lad]

One big issue with a rotary - or at least in our experience - is that as soon as it’s stopped, the cows crap. They also crap coming towards the “Off” . 161 cows can crap quite a bit which needs lot of water to shift. So much so, that we tend to run a volume hose on to the platform mabout from halfway through milking to the end.
Add in x2 internal wash and a silo wash and it comes to 30 cubes or so.

Yes, we run the plate cooler water to the wash down tank but use a heat exchanger off the snap chiller to pre warm heater water to 60

If you were to reduce water consumption by 25%, you’d save pumping clean and dirty water.
Pumping 7500L clean water pumping 7500 dirty water is 15000L/day. x365 days=5,475,000 litres x 5 years that’s 27,375,000 litres.
Tank washing is pretty fixed, plant washing can vary greatly with number of washes/chemicals, ours is probably half of most peoples at 20L/unit/milking, 12 out of 14 milkings a week and 30L unit 2 out of 14 milkings a week. Wash down is probably where biggest savings can be made, possibly different nozzles, better cow flow, improving milking protocols.
Hope this helps a little

 

[Bald Rick]

If you were to reduce water consumption by 25%, you’d save pumping clean and dirty water.
Pumping 7500L clean water pumping 7500 dirty water is 15000L/day. x365 days=5,475,000 litres x 5 years that’s 27,375,000 litres.
Tank washing is pretty fixed, plant washing can vary greatly with number of washes/chemicals, ours is probably half of most peoples at 20L/unit/milking, 12 out of 14 milkings a week and 30L unit 2 out of 14 milkings a week. Wash down is probably where biggest savings can be made, possibly different nozzles, better cow flow, improving milking protocols.
Hope this helps a little

All internal washings and wash down goes to the same sump.

Even at 20 litres/ point that would still be 1280 litres a milking for us

Cows will crap. Can’t stop them, the little loves

 

[Stinker]

Make your soak away with Reeds, rushes etc which you can use for 364 days of the year.

 

[Grassman247]

Put all washing’s and slurry into the same pit, buy a separator and stack the solid which you can take to your far away maize ground which will increase your liquid storage by about 30%. It will also enable you to apply more liquid when you go out with your umbilical system without fear of contamination. A friend of mine is very pleased with his system, electric pumps and separators have become much more reliable in recent years

 

[Keep On]

I’m not sure you’d pump our slurry without the rotary washings.

 

[Blue.]

If you were to reduce water consumption by 25%, you’d save pumping clean and dirty water.
Pumping 7500L clean water pumping 7500 dirty water is 15000L/day. x365 days=5,475,000 litres x 5 years that’s 27,375,000 litres.
Tank washing is pretty fixed, plant washing can vary greatly with number of washes/chemicals, ours is probably half of most peoples at 20L/unit/milking, 12 out of 14 milkings a week and 30L unit 2 out of 14 milkings a week. Wash down is probably where biggest savings can be made, possibly different nozzles, better cow flow, improving milking protocols.
Hope this helps a little

I use 14L/unit in a morning and 10L at night,never had a problem with bacto,don’t even turn the air blast on at night,it’s just a rinse through.

 

[jimmer]

One big issue with a rotary - or at least in our experience - is that as soon as it’s stopped, the cows crap. They also crap coming towards the “Off” . 161 cows can crap quite a bit which needs lot of water to shift. So much so, that we tend to run a volume hose on to the platform about from halfway through milking to the end.
Add in x2 internal wash and a silo wash and it comes to 30 cubes or so.

Yes, we run the plate cooler water to the wash down tank but use a heat exchanger off the snap chiller to pre warm heater water to 60 degs or so

I have no experience with rotaries, but I do have experience with the connection between water in parlours and cows crapping

 

[Barleycorn]

We've just put in a soakaway for the bulk tank washings, should save a bit.

 

[lazy farmer]

Put all washing’s and slurry into the same pit, buy a separator and stack the solid which you can take to your far away maize ground which will increase your liquid storage by about 30%. It will also enable you to apply more liquid when you go out with your umbilical system without fear of contamination. A friend of mine is very pleased with his system, electric pumps and separators have become much more reliable in recent years

Until this autumn I thought that Seperator’s were the devils spawn. Now somebody competent has taken over running our system and it has become a thing of beauty. No brake downs, no blockages. And no backlogs

 

[In the pit]

Until this autumn I thought that Seperator’s were the devils spawn. Now somebody competent has taken over running our system and it has become a thing of beauty. No brake downs, no blockages. And no backlogs

Make

 

[Bald Rick]

Put all washing’s and slurry into the same pit, buy a separator and stack the solid which you can take to your far away maize ground which will increase your liquid storage by about 30%. It will also enable you to apply more liquid when you go out with your umbilical system without fear of contamination. A friend of mine is very pleased with his system, electric pumps and separators have become much more reliable in recent years

Can't

All our lagoons are under slats

 

[lazy farmer]

Make

Bauer