Leachate water,,,,,,,, If leachate water is sprayed onto a field and the field is used?

Question

If leachate water is sprayed on a field and the field is used for feeding (i.e) making, bailing hay, How if any dangerous would it be to the animals eating it? Is there a high risk of it making the animals sick from the it?

Answer 1

It all depends on what the leachate is. If you are spraying well composted leachate from manure and watering it in, there should not be too much of a problem. Watering it in though should be done, and if the manure tea is from the same animals that are grazing, you may want to be sure they have no health issues that are transmittable. Composting will kill any virulent organism but there is more to it than that. Higher animals in the food chain can get more heavy metals and contaminates. Washing in the "tea" gets it off the grass and into the soil. Most places have strict rules and guidelines for using human manure. That needs to be composted well and you should absolutely know the source regardless. If it is from your own system, the family has no health issues, and you follow guidelines for proper composting and concentrations, that should be no issue. Mixes of human and grazing animals is probably best for the high concentrations of bacteria to do the composting work. Composting by making biogas (methane) kills two birds/ stone. As we humans are such a HUGE population, we really need to get our excrement back into the system and work with Mother Nature. We keep taking from nature but in our effort to keep our p**p out of sight, out of mind, we actually cause issues with pollutants (ocean and ground water) and that will come back to bite us in the ****. Burying it in septic systems makes a mess of ground water resources and pumping it out to sea is ruining the ability of the oceans to support us with food.

So using it composted is OK if watered in well. Give it a good solid rain storm or two (maybe try to time your tea spreading with storm systems). Be even more sure to water in well and extra time, then a real good drying, before baling.

Using it is the best thing you can do. How can you say NO to free nitrogen.