Watch: slurry in a hurry

Intermittent rain with moderate drying is making all field work difficult. Nonetheless, slurry must still be spread if farmers are to have sufficient storage capacity to carry them through the winter housing period.

Patsy Nugent is a contractor with over 40 years’ experience in slurry spreading. He operates two umbilical systems and a few slurry tankers.

On the day we visited, Patsy’s team were busy emptying a large, one-million-gallon lagoon near Kilmeaden, Co Waterford.

Apart from the hum of the New Holland T7040 on the SlurryKat Doda pump beside the lagoon, one could be fooled into thinking not much was happening at all. It is only when you hear the volumes of slurry being moved every hour that you get an idea of the capacity of this type of system.

John Walsh, who was operating the pump, said: “In watery slurry, we can probably pump between 30,000 to 35,000 gallons per hour within close range of 500m to 600m. It also depends on the topography of the land.

"Pumping uphill obviously reduces output. Watery slurry is easier to pump as it flows easier than thicker material.

"Open-air lagoons suit our system best as they have a higher percentage water than any underground tank. In saying that, they still have to be mixed to make sure that the slurry is consistent.”

Mix

Patsy uses a large NC propeller to reach into the lagoon to get the slurry to mix and in larger jobs may even have to use two.

The New Holland T7040 was pumping the slurry a short distance to the dribble bar working in the field approximately 500m away. More often than not, though, slurry is pumped up to 2km away which can make the pumping tractor work harder, according to John.

To move all of this hose around, the front linkage-mounted hose reeler takes 600m and the Bak-Pak takes 1,000m of hose. This is similar to the front reeler but can carry more of the 4in hose.

How does it work?

So what is involved in getting an umbilical system up and running?

Firstly, the umbilical hose is laid out in 200m sections by either the front-mounted reeler or the Bak-Pak.

These are then connected with quick couplers. Once this is done, they are all connected to the pumping tractor at the lagoon which pumps to the 7m dribble bar on the back of the tractor in the field. Thirty-six 2in hoses deliver the slurry in bands across the full width of the machine.

Patsy offers both a splash plate and dribble bar depending on what the customer wants but also on the type of slurry.

In conditions where heavy slurry tankers could damage the ground, the umbilical system treads a lot lighter

“Dribble bars are fine for this job but we would have to use the splash plate for thicker material as the pipes on the dribble bar would easily block. The tractor carrying the dribble bar up and down the field was a 1999 8560 with in excess of 17,000 hours on the clock."

Load

According to Patsy, “it is fine for this job as there is very little load on the tractor. The 8560 is light enough for the job also”.

I asked about blockages and how they managed them: “There’s a macerator at the main pump beside the lagoon and also in the dribble bar so blockages are rarely a problem.”

Patsy expected the lagoon they were working on could take a few days to empty due to the sheer size and the number of fields they had to cover. “Poles, troughs and obstacles in fields require a smart approach to spreading, as do small paddocks, but I’ve a good team who can get this done quickly.”

When it came to finishing a job, I was curious as to how they emptied the long hose that had been snaking over and back across the numerous paddocks.

Mark Walsh, who was driving the dribble bar tractor, said: “We connect an industrial air compressor to the hose just after the pump at the lagoon and blow out the last of the slurry from the hose.

"This is especially important in frosty weather as the water can freeze and burst the hoses at the clamps.

"Lastly, when the hoses have been blown out, we insert a sponge ball into the hose to get a complete clean-out of the hose. The flexible ball fits snugly into the hose and means that all residues are completely flushed out of the hose.’’

The sponge-ball is used to flush out the last of the slurry from the umbilical hose.

I asked Patsy about the biggest advantages of the umbilical system from a farmer’s point of view.

He said: “In conditions where heavy slurry tankers could damage the ground, the umbilical system treads a lot lighter. Cow passages and field gaps are also saved for cows without damage from tankers. In the springtime, the umbilical systems are very busy as they can travel earlier in the year meaning grass gets going earlier.”

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