Manitoba Pork Council has a checklist of Steps To Take When Closing Down A Hog Barn For An Extended Period Of Time (PDF). Shutting down a barn isn’t something that anyone wants to do, but many producers are finding themselves in that situation. This checklist can help make the shutdown a little smoother.
AIC Notes pointed me to an Ammonia Loss Calculator by Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. What I found interesting was not the dollar values themselves, but the way that they are affected by the different factors in the calculation. Change from broadcast to injection and you are suddenly losing half the nitrogen you were before. [...]
One of the questions that comes when discussing manure separation is “What do we do with the separated solids?” The phosphorus content of the liquids has been reduced enough to allow for application near the barn, but the solids and their nutrients still need to be dealt with. Exnstion.org has How much does it costs [...]
They’ve put up the proceedings for the Manitoba Agronomists Conference 2009, so for the rest of the presentations, I’m going to just highlight points that caught my attention. Doug Wilcox’s The good, the bad and the ugly of Manitoba crop production was an attempt at quantifying the quality of years for crop production. He emphasized [...]
Back in spring, I wrote a post discussing What is Manure Worth? In that post I estimated the value of manure from three different kinds of hog operations. In this post, I’m going to run through the same calculations for liquid dairy manure, solid beef manure, and liquid poultry manure. I will include the Tri-Provincial [...]
If you’ve always wanted to write up Manure Management Plans but never had the certification, this is the course for you! Earn the respect of your friends, clients, and colleagues when you tell them where to put their manure! (Offer only valid for Professional Agrologists (P.Ag.) and Certified Crop Advisors (CCA) ) You must complete [...]
I attended the Achieving Manure Phosphorus Balance In Manitoba Technical Workshop on November 30 and December 1, 2009. Here is a quick summary of what I heard. Opening Remarks – Barry Todd, Deputy Minister, MAFRI Manure is a valuable commodity – not waste Many of our current issues have been around for a long time [...]
I heard about this at a conference today. Veris has a soil probe that uses Near InfraRed to analyze and record soil properties on the fly. It appears that so far they just measure carbon but I can see this being tremendously useful for measuring phosphorous levels across a field. Cliff Loewen and Scott Dick [...]
In order to prepare third-party manure management plans in Manitoba, you must be registered as a Manure Management Planner. Manitoba Conservation has arranged two meetings so far to help keep Manure Management Planners up to date with changes in regulations and current research. I attended the meeting yesterday so here are some of the highlights [...]
When I begin working with a new operation, they rarely have solid figures for the nutrients in their manure. This makes estimating nutrient amounts for their manure management plan tricky. It usually takes several years to accumulate enough samples to be confident of their accuracy. While waiting to accumulate enough samples for a barn-specific recommendation, [...]
