Friday, 22 March 2024 09:55

Dealing with effluent efficiently

Written by  Staff Reporters
The new 24m BacPac Umbilical ground-level application boom with section control and variable rate flow meter. The new 24m BacPac Umbilical ground-level application boom with section control and variable rate flow meter.

With slurry and dairy effluent being recognised as an asset by most farmers, it makes sense to have it applied in a way that makes the most of the nutrients carried within.

Indeed, by considering it a fertiliser, it should be applied as any other dressing.

German effluent specialists Vogelsang has provided equipment for many years, either attached to a tanker or via an umbilical system, so took the opportunity at the recent LAMMA Show in the UK to display its new 24m BacPac Umbilical ground-level application boom with section control and variable rate flow meter.

At the heart of the BacPac unit is a Krohne flow meter, while Section Control is achieved by the inflation of small balloons in the feed pipes to the part of the boom that needs to be switched off, a valve system said to be unique to the company.

The system is ISOBUS compatible so may be used with prescription mapping or, in the future, a Near Infra Red (NIR) sensor such as John Deere's harvest lab.

The company was also showing its DoubleFlow shoe which splits the flow of slurry, delivering two lines at 12.5cm apart, rather than a larger, more typical layout at 25cm spacing. The company claims this will help achieve a more even distribution of slurry, as well as increasing the surface area in contact with the soil and air, thereby accelerating absorption by the soil and faster aerobic breakdown of the product.

Vogelsang DoubleFlow FBTW

The DoubleFlow shoe splits the flow of slurry, delivering two lines at 12.5cm apart.

Vogelsang notes that the greatest number of complaints about ground spreading is that the process can leave unabsorbed slurry on the surface that can lead to contamination of the cut sward and in severe cases, kill off the grass. By spreading material thinner, this problem is largely avoided.

The double runner system will be available for the UniSpread and BlackBird trailing shoe linkage series from May 2024 and can also be retrofitted to older machines.

More like this

Cropsy's cutting-edge AI on the vineyard

A New Zealand startup is providing growers with vital information for daily operations and long-term vineyard management, using a unique and scalable AI vine scanner that gives a vine-specific view of disease, pruning, land productivity and yields. Forty Cropsy systems have been deployed throughout New Zealand, the United States and France, with more than 20 million vine scans conducted in the past 12 months.

Featured

Brendan Attrill scoops national award for sustainable farming

Brendan Attrill of Caiseal Trust in Taranaki has been announced as the 2025 National Ambassador for Sustainable Farming and Growing and recipient of the Gordon Stephenson Trophy at the National Sustainability Showcase at in Wellington this evening.

National

Machinery & Products

Farming smarter with technology

The National Fieldays is an annual fixture in the farming calendar: it draws in thousands of farmers, contractors, and industry…

RainWave set to cause a splash

Traditional spreading via tankers or umbilical systems have typically discharged effluent onto splash-plates, resulting in small droplet sizes, which in…

» Latest Print Issues Online

Milking It

Misguided campaign

OPINION: Last week, Greenpeace lit up Fonterra's Auckland headquarters with 'messages from the common people' - that the sector is…

Fieldays goes urban

OPINION: Once upon a time the Fieldays were for real farmers, salt of the earth people who thrived on hard…

» Connect with Dairy News

» eNewsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter