Here's my agriculture question. how do livestock farmers process the large amounts of manure?

Question

Here's my agriculture question. how do livestock farmers process the large amounts of manure?

Answer 1

They use if for fertilzer, but they handle it with powered fork lifts and automatic tractor-pulled manure spreaders; very little manual labor involved.

Answer 2

feed their animals with laxatives

Answer 3

Most large livestock producers put the manure into huge concrete pits with some water and enzymes, and the manure is allowed to age and decompost into fertilizer.  This fertilizer can be sprayed directly onto fields, but generally it is processed into big bags sold at your local garden center.

Manure is one of the cash products associated with livestock farming.

Answer 4

manure=p**p

livestock farmer=has lots of animals that p**p

Answer 5

You only get large quantities of manure when animals are kept intensively, either in yards or indoors.

More extensive systems don't have this problem -- the dung and urine falls on the ground where it fertilises the pasture, much as it does with wild animals.

As Speedn00 and Chad J have said, mixed farming systems allow manure to be re-used efficiently on crops.

The real problem comes when intensive livestock farming becomes dominant in a district (or country), and there is not enough crop farming to use all the manure from the animals.  The animal feed is grown far away (using artificial fertilisers), and the manure cannot easily be transported back to fertilise those crops.  This is when you get the large amounts of manure building up.  The solution is to avoid such intensive and unbalanced farming.

We have a similar problem with human waste.  Instead of using it on the land we have expensive and complex sewage works to process most of the nutrients out of it, dumping the rest in the rivers and sea.  We even mix the human sewage with industrial effluent, so the remaining sludge is contaminated with heavy metals and other pollutants.  Bonkers!

Answer 6

The majority of farms use the manure as fertilizer for their fields.  This helps reduce the amount of fertilizer needed to keep the field from becoming barren.

Some large farms are now starting to use manure as electricity.  The vast amount of waste is shipped to plants where it is allowed to decompose.  The methane from this process is captured and burnt to create electricity.  The burning of methane is a very efficient process with very little emissions compared to other electric generation.

Answer 7

there is some research on using the manure to make methane or natural gas.

Answer 8

Most livestock farmers are also grain farmers too.  Manure is like money.  Manure is full of nitrogen fertilizer.  Nitrogen fertilizer is essential to good yields in corn.  Most livestock farmers spread or knife the manure onto their fields or sell the manure to farmers who put it on their own farms.

Answer 9

the way farmers do it where I live is mix it with water in a big slurry pit maybe you heard of the farm in Lewis County New York that had there levy break and a couple million gallons flushed into the Black River and destroyed all fish wildlife. they put it in large machines to spread it out over pastures.

Answer 10

We don't. We let the manure settle so it will fertilize the ground and produce more grass for the next year. God knows we need it right along w/ rain.

Answer 11

They use the Manure to spread over there fields to fertilize .Got friends in the farming business.They use 1/3rd manure 2/3rd water.Thats why you can smell manure most before they start to grow there crops

Answer 12

I work on a small, mixed farm. The livestock department put the animal manure and soiled bedding on the various compost heaps, in rotation, and then the garden department come along a few months later and spread it on the vegetables.

I also just chuck the manure from my livestock onto the compost heap.

Answer 13

Unfortunately, the quantity of manure produced by meat animals is huge, and there is no good solution for disposing of it.  If you are interested in a career in science, this is one to consider.  Seriously.

Answer 14

I used to put all of my animal waste in a pile out in my pasture--during the winter it would get hot and produce smoke and in the spring it was aged and I would call nurseries and they would come and load it up--I did not charge just got the pile down once again.