The manager of industry and policy analysis with Sask Pork is encouraging grain growers to consider the use of swine manure to cut their fertilizer costs.
The fall is typically the time of year when grain growers consider their fertilizer needs.
Mark Ferguson, the manager of industry and policy analysis with the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board, says those fortunate enough to be located in close proximity to a swine barn are increasingly interested in taking advantage of the fertilizer value contained in the manure generated by those barns.
1,000 gallons of manure contains over 20 pounds of nitrogen, close to 7pounds of phosphorus, 14 pounds of potassium so it’s a very nutrient dense product and, if you apply 6,000 or 8.000 gallons of swine manure per acre it contains almost enough nutrients to grow a crop and you would need minimal application of other commercial fertilizers in the first year to grow a crop like canola or wheat or barley.
If you look at the numbers, when you apply about 8,000 gallons an acre of swine manure, there’s about $183 of nutrient value in that manure per acre. Of course there’s an application cost to that. It’s usually somewhere around 1 cent a gallon but once you take that into account, you’re still about $100 an acre benefit of using the product so there’s definitely a large value there. If you had a 2,400 head finishing barn, the benefit is about $10 per finishing space so a barn like that, you’d get about $20,000 in net value just from the manure.
Ferguson says the nutrient value of manure is something to think about.
He encourages anyone interested in getting into hog production to take advantage of manure on their land to contact Sask Pork for more information.
