Slurry Sampling

Slurry is a valuable source of nutrients on your farm.  In places it can be the only source of phosphorus, its is critically important when trying to improve biological and physical health and when trying to maximise soil nitrogen mineralisation.  It must be used wisely to maximise its effectiveness.

The starting point to getting the best from our slurries is to understand what lies within our slurries.  Book values are useful but may not be applicable to what’s within your tanks.  Through our Analytical Services Laboratory in lombardstown, we offer slurry analysis and the results are certainly of interest.

To now we have adjusted the nutrient content of slurries based on their dry matters (DM) but as we take more and more slurry samples we are beginning to see variations across N, P and K that is not explained solely by the DM of the slurry.

Using 3000 gals/ac of “greenbook” slurry would supply 27N, 15P and 96K.  However, 3000 gals of our average slurry in 2026 would supply 17N, 9P and 45K.

These differences might be

• the difference between getting a good crop of 1^st cut that bulks up as required in early to mid-May versus one that needs until the 1^st of June to bulk.
• Or it might be the difference between stripping P and K from your soil versus building soil nutrient reserves.

In order to build competent fertiliser plans we need to know what we are putting out.

Talk to your local farm sustainability advisor or Contact our Inside Sales Team today 0n 022 31644 for more information