A growing dairy herd has prompted a Yorkshire family to invest in a new lagoon, pumping system and Vogelsang XSplit Compact separator.
Mark Anderson farms with his wife and sons Matthew and James at Layton Fields Farm, North Yorkshire. In less than ten years, the herd has grown from 70 to 130 cows, with 102 in milk and 85 followers.
“We have been updating buildings, adding cubicles and putting up a new shed with a second planned. However, we hadn’t taken full account of the impact the slurry burden would have on the farm,” says Mark.
With storage limited to tanks beneath the housing, Matthew and James regularly transport slurry off farm.
“It’s become a real problem because it takes so much time and fuel to send it to other farms locally. We should be using more of it here, but we are struggling to find more land and with 140 acres we have more slurry than we can use at times,” he says.
The new system will separate solids before pumping liquid to a lined lagoon. An FETF grant covered almost half the separator’s value.
“The grants have come at just the right time for us and to get a separator of this quality for the farm will enable us to separate up to 40 percent of our solids which will make managing slurry much more efficient,” he says.
“Separating the slurry will help us to manage our inputs, reduce our reliance on bought in fertiliser and provide us with a liquid that is easier to pump and apply with our trailing shoe applicator,” he adds.
The farm’s 10.5 metre Vogelsang BlackBird trailing shoe, mounted on a 3,000 gallon tanker, has struggled with thick, straw-laden slurry during dry weather. The 5,500 cubic metre lagoon will store separated liquid for grassland application.
“We have too much P and K in our soils so separating that out in the solids and potentially moving it off farm will be a lot easier than what we have to do now. We will also be able to reduce our bought in fertiliser costs because we will be able to store the remaining liquid and apply it when its most beneficial,” he says.
The investment should also free Matthew and James to develop the business.
“The boys are keen to do more than just cart slurry and milk cows. They have a vision for how the farm can grow and be more productive but with the growing pains we have experienced they have been wrapped up firefighting daily challenges,” he says.
Housing the Holstein-Friesian herd for the first time this year highlighted the storage shortfall.
“They have milked well throughout the hot weather and we are averaging 9,200 litres with butter fats at 4.7 percent and protein at 3.6 percent. Housing the cows was the catalyst for the slurry storage and equipment investment. With the lagoon almost finished and the separator being installed imminently we should have a system that will make this winter much easier on the whole farm,” he concludes.
More information about the XSplit slurry separator.