Thanks Dermot. It’s going into herbal ley in the spring so will have a bit of muck spread,diced in and then drilled into.

Aussie farmer here. We document everything. It's very easy to miss things by familiarity, we get too familiar. However doing a quarterly, bi-annual and anual review you pick up so much that you'd miss with just doing the usual. I've only owned my farm for 16 years now but the records go back to 1947 and it quickly becomes obvious documentation is everything.

@buildmotosykletist1987 that's a good point- my grandfather used to record things and it's fascinating to look back. I'll need to get better at recording ....

Was thinking just this !

Hey Henry, Thanks for your questions. Ill try my best to explain it as simply as possible (its quite complicated with lots of moving parts) but to start with ill recommend reading a book called 'For the love of soil' - Nicole Masters. Where to start... The reason why plants don't mine for nutrients in a granular or liquid fert situation isn't necessarily to do with he plant being fed or not, its actually to do with the soil. When using fert traditionally, the soil stops functioning naturally because the fertiliser creates an environment that is unsuitable i.e Inbalance in PH, bacterial/fungi ratio, carbon nitrogen ration etc. Therefore when the plant signals nutrients, the soil biology can't respond to bring them what is needed. Over time this leads to the issues that we see now regarding soil aggregates, water infiltration, organic matter etc. To your point about foliar landing on the soils. Foliar is generally applied to a leafy plant which hopefully should cover most if not all bare soils but even when it doesn't the concentrations of foliar N are so low in comparison to granular or liquid N that any run off is negligible but I agree, still present. The other difference is that through a Tow and Fert you can add extra carbon sources, biologicals and bio stimulants to the tank mix at the same time, effectively offsetting the residual fert that does find itself on the soil and actively feed the soil biology at the same time. The nozzles on a Tow and Fert are very different to that of a liquid fertiliser spreader. They work more like a splash plate on a tanker rather than a dribble bar like you would expect from a liquid fert applicator. As I said, a lot to unpick, but appreciate your question. You could also look on the tow and fert website and read some of their news letters which includes a lot of science behind the concept.

@baldysfarm okay, when I have used foliar fertiliser (mz28) on wheat it's been sprayed on at 150l water at something like 30l of mz28 through normal spray nozzles into the canopy. Just a different way around it I suppose

Thanks Niamh, Planning on doing quite a lot of different things with the machine this year so hopefully I will really be able to show case its worth to people via the channel. If I can work out how, id love to do some testing over time to show improvement in the soil health on the farm.

Thank Kai, Its an awesome machine and I'm really looking forward to putting it to use properly this year. Keep an eye out for me being neck deep in grass!!!

It's awesome Jeff. Really excited to show it off properly this season. So the answer would be yes and no. Max width with out machine is about 18m but the large ones will do 24m. They are looking at potentially making a bigger width machine but it's taking a lot of time to plan etc. A traditional sprayer in theory could spread the foliar N but where the tow and fert wins out is that you can add products like molasses, hamates, boistimulants, dirt water and even small seeds to the tank mix. This is because of the nozzle size as well as the custom designed trash pump on the machine, which allows it to handle the trickier products.

Don’t worry, we got that worked out before we started 😂 we nearly did though.

Yes you can use a normal sprayer to a certain extent. I been dissolving urea in an ibc with a pump in the bottom to stir it up. Then suck it into the sprayer. Urea is easy it's when you start to add humates and other things it blocks the filter. Iv ordered a tow and fert to speed it all up

Thanks Ben 👍

I 15kg N, 2kg Epsom salts, 2kg molasses per hectare. With some Sea 90 sea salt and some Humates, but if I’m honest I can’t remember the quantities of those two. 👍

On it! 👍

Benchmarking wise we are actually doing really well in general. From a personal perspective I’m always looking to improve fertility and weaning weights (without add creep) but I think we can do a lot of that with grazing management and keeping quality is the grass towards the backend of the grazing season. Bulling period would be the other (kinda ties in with fertility) We are currently 12 weeks for cows and 9 weeks for heifers. I really want to get that down to 9 weeks for cows and 6 weeks for heifers.

@baldysfarm good to hear, I'm sure the stabilisers won't have a problem with shorter bulling period. Do you only have heifers bulled shorter time to allow them to recover and get the 2nd calf?

@@BordersFarmLife​​⁠Mainly the shorter bulling period just helps naturally select the most fertile animals to keep in the herd. One thing we have noticed using our cow/calf data sheet is that 90% of the underperforming animals came from the last 50% of animals to calve. So in theory, the shorter Bulling period selects for the animals that are most fertile, produce the best calves and have the best longevity and therefore the lowest cow depreciation too. But you’re right, given the heifers another 3 weeks to recover from calving is really gonna help them recover. Especially when calving at 2.

@@baldysfarm that's great info and data to have about the problem cows! By instinct and husbandry I would say that is also true. Now I'm starting to track our cows and make stricter decisions going forward!

Seconded. Also use rubber / latex gloves when you can

We farm 450 acres and currently have 130 suckler cows but expanding to 250. Numbers and acres do make it easier but the biggest difference is management and planning.