The use of straw or
other carbon rich material such as corn stover has always been
important to the way we farm here at Pastures A Plenty. Hogs, which
are our main livestock business, have an ongoing need to seek and
find, to play and manipulate their environment Straw or corn stalks
is just what is needed to enrich the environment for them. Hog
satisfaction makes for good thrifty production.
We also recognized
early on that bedding mixed with the manure did much to modify the
smell that accompanies livestock production. Carbon ties up and
stabilizes the nitrogen compounds. It is an important adjustment we
make to enable us to live with our work, which is critical when the
work is more about animals than machines. This is an important
principle of any practice of animal husbandry. Close association
enables the respect between animal and human that fosters humane
values in agriculture. Without it, farming fails into being just
another industry. We on the farm can plan a picnic or barbecue at
any time without fear that smells and commotion will ruin the event.
Since we live right here, we can notice anything out of the ordinary
that indicates something wrong with the pigs.
Note the pictures.
You can see two phases of our manure handling. First, pretty much
all of the residue from our corn crop is baled for bedding in big
round bales. We use about 350 of these every year. This project can
be a bit nerve wracking as a wet fall makes it difficult to get dry
bedding. These bales are hauled to the livestock area and stacked
for easy access during the coming winter. Generally six to seven of
the bales are used every week for all phases of the hog production
cycle, from mama sows to older growing animals. We add bedding
regularly right on top the manure and soiled bedding, thus keeping
the area clean. We clean the areas less frequently, depending on
the particular facility and when we do, old trucks and trailers are
used to haul the material to the field where it will be used and
stockpile it. This helps us match manure application with crop needs
and windows of opportunity to apply. And it allows the manure to
compost.
Using hog manure as
a solid material prevents us from the over application and runoff
into creeks and rivers that is a concern with liquid or slurry manure
systems. And the bedding helps make the product into something that
the soil seems to recognize. The fact that the feces and urine is
already mixed with carbon material that came from the field and has
been composting and changing in that form essentially starts the
process of incorporating the fertility into the field even before it
is spread, we think. Now with the concerns about climate change, we
need to know more about how these things work. Does this system
return more carbon safely to the soil instead of burning it into the
atmosphere? What is the effect of this kind of manure handling on
the amount of methane production? We already are studying soil life
for clues about how a healthy population of everything that belongs
in the soil helps stabilize the climate. But we know less than we
need to about the usefulness of manure handled as a solid material
simply because the Universities and industry have assumed liquid and
slurry systems to be the future and have neglected research in this
important area. All this is changing fast, making our business and
way of life pretty exciting.
