Dairying on heavy soils

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deere6320

Well-Known Member
Is it possible to milk cows on heavy soils that would get soft quickly be poached easily ,is there any way around this apart from putting money into drainage
 
Yes but with alot of work and time and money,drainage for starters then road ways then be prepared to let cows only graze for 2 to 3 hrs at a time after milking then put them back in the shed an repeat, its ground that will always have to be minded
 
deere6320 said:
Is it possible to milk cows on heavy soils that would get soft quickly be poached easily ,is there any way around this apart from putting money into drainage
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Also. I’ve seen heavy land with much money spent on it and still was never a patch on good land, not even close.
 
Have. A great friend from down near Carrignavar way in cork.excellent land. They’d always have their cows out around mid March without a bother. We’d always be a month later .. with heavy land and of course their land would be better performing. You can drain and reseed all you want but when it’s heavy, muddy clay underneath with adequate but not great surface; then money will only take it so far. Never be the same as good land.
 
Ptk44 said:
Have. A great friend from down near Carrignavar way in cork.excellent land. They’d always have their cows out around mid March without a bother. We’d always be a month later .. with heavy land and of course their land would be better performing. You can drain and reseed all you want but when it’s heavy, muddy clay underneath with adequate but not great surface; then money will only take it so far. Never be the same as good land.
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i have a brother farming in that area and he would be a mt later than us and we would be only 50 miles south of him
 
Was looking into adding sand to land to help drain the top several inches. 1in sand to 6in soil apparently makes a good mix. Tried a few plant pots with it in a heavy soil at home, mixed half soil half sand and 1 to 6 and just pure soil. Half n half dried out quickest, 1 in 6 dried slower, the soil on its own dried very slow you'd say it was moist for a week where the other 2 were dry after a day and it dried into clumps where the other 2 were like tilled soil.
 
jcb411abuser said:
Was looking into adding sand to land to help drain the top several inches. 1in sand to 6in soil apparently makes a good mix. Tried a few plant pots with it in a heavy soil at home, mixed half soil half sand and 1 to 6 and just pure soil. Half n half dried out quickest, 1 in 6 dried slower, the soil on its own dried very slow you'd say it was moist for a week where the other 2 were dry after a day and it dried into clumps where the other 2 were like tilled soil.
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If I done the maths correctly, 1" to the acre is 100 cubic meters.
 
deere6320 said:
Is it possible to milk cows on heavy soils that would get soft quickly be poached easily ,is there any way around this apart from putting money into drainage
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Stock the farm at 2 cows for every dry acre. So if you have 30 good acres, 60 cows. The other land can be used when dry and for silage. Have a way set up that you can feed silage in the yard on slats after milking if needed. Concentrate on getting the grazing ground setup with a road, electric fencing and water troughs, not in the ditch but in the middle of fields so cows can stand around them. Have the fields set up that you can allocate the grass as the cows require using temporary fences.
 
Paw said:
How many acres are you planning to cover? What's the price of sand? Sounds an expensive experiment.
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I might try an acre at some point, sand is 8 to 12 euro a ton collected, my brother is a hauler so I can get it delivered pretty cheap on back loads if I'd like.
I'm bedding a pen of calves in sand right now to see if it's feasible to use it for milkers in the future, estimate I'd need about 350 to 500 ton annually, I'd bed the cows in a loose house no cubicles, then I'd take that sand out annually and bed the yearlings on it, year after it would go out on the land theoretically.
 
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jcb411abuser said:
I might try an acre at some point, sand is 8 to 12 euro a ton collected, my brother is a hauler so I can get it delivered pretty cheap on back loads if I'd like.
I'm bedding a pen of calves in sand right now to see if it's feasible to use it for milkers in the future, estimate I'd need about 350 to 500 ton annually, I'd bed the cows in a loose house no cubicles, then I'd take that sand out annually and bed the yearlings on it, year after it would go out on the land theoretically.
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That sounds like a feasible plan. You'll get your 1" to the acre eventually but every little helps.
 
Paw said:
That sounds like a feasible plan. You'll get your 1" to the acre eventually but every little helps.
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Like most things it sounds too easy to work, it would be great if it has a double use but at the same time if it didn't improve soil I can just wash it and reuse it.
 
jcb411abuser said:
Like most things it sounds too easy to work, it would be great if it has a double use but at the same time if it didn't improve soil I can just wash it and reuse it.
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It will have an effect but it might just take too long to be noticeable.
 
I think sand is 2.4 to 2.6 specific gravity. Therefore your 1” to the acre would be 100mt cubed by minimum 2.4 = 240 ton.
Good idea and interesting experiments but Jasus twod be some amount of work.
 
In theory it should work, that’s one of the ways how golf courses improve drainage. How long it’ll last and how cost effective it is is harder to predict!
 
KTM Farmer said:
I think sand is 2.4 to 2.6 specific gravity. Therefore your 1” to the acre would be 100mt cubed by minimum 2.4 = 240 ton.
Good idea and interesting experiments but Jasus twod be some amount of work.
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240 ton is only 12 lorry load, a lime spreader would soon put it on
 
The coastal heavy land around here had sea sand mixed with it generations ago. Such “man made soils” are known as Plaggan/Plaggen soils.
As @jcb411abuser says, it was done to improve drainage & workability of soils with high clay content.

I think it resulted in high pH as the sea sand used contained a lot of calcium carbonate based sea shells etc.
The pH thing is just my own theory. It might explain the high carbonate levels that lock up P on some of our land.
 
a lot of sandpits around here and every pit has its own characteristics, some of them are good for building , some of them are used on horse gallops, some on golf courses others on gaa pitches,, what i,m saying is not every sand would be suitable for what @jcb411abuser wants to do
 
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