Hi guys
Which system do you think is the most profitable? Which requires the most work?
We currently grow a LOT of forage for our biogas operation and use the digestate/liquid manure to feed crops so it's a double whammy.
Wondering though if all the silage we make could be better fed to animals?
Also, which operation produces the most manure? I am keen to start using solid manures as well as liquid, but we need big quantities.
Any discussion gratefully received. Thanks.
Is there somewhere I can purchase manures?
Biogas vs livestock and manures
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Biogas vs livestock and manures
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Re: Biogas vs livestock and manures
Not 100% sure I clearly understand your question, but a few comments/observations that might help:
1) Producing silage in the BGA is profitable without a doubt and worthy of productive effort. I view the additional production of slurry view this method as a bonus.
2) Cows primarily produce money via the milk. They also produce manure, but the 'value' of this manure is secondary. While it is true that I mainly keep adding to my cow/pig herds while thinking about "I need more manure for my fields", the reality is that these animals are profitable in their own right -- I do not view keeping cows/pigs as "a cheap way to get manure". Animals and feeding them is pretty expensive, but you get paid back and then have manure also.
3) If I wanted to look at animals vs the BGA PURELY in terms of "best way to get fertliser", then I think the BGA is by far the cheapest and easiest way to acquire large enough volume of slurry to do this.
-- acquiring enough cows/pigs to produce large volumes of manure/slurry is going to cost very large amounts of money for the animals themselves. Plus cost for a mixer, plus any extra equipment if you choose to do baling.
-- animals also consume feed. Pigs in particular eat a fair bit of corn which is otherwise saleable. Cows mainly eat grass or its derivatives/by-products (silage, TMR)
A couple examples of data to compare:
-- 100 cows cost 500,000 dollars, and produce roughly 25k each of slurry and manure per day by consuming around 40,000 units of grass/silage/straw. This size herd will give you about 40k worth of milk income in the same period. (Normal mode pricing)
-- 40k in grass (the amount you fed the cows in above example) costs you essentially nothing, but only produces perhaps 15k of slurry. Thus, to get the same 50k worth of fertlising manure, you'd need 120K+ of silage fed into the BGA per day. Interestingly, that would then produce probably 40k in profits (similar to your milk profit .. but you didn't have to spend 500k in animal costs)
-- if instead of buying 100 cows, you used that 500k to buy fields, and planted grass --- you would probably be able to generate (as a rough guess, I haven't looked at this closely) 250k+ in grass per day, which could be fed into the BGA yielding 80k profit plus 80k slurry -- or approximate double the manure and profit output of cows.
-- if you went with corn planting on 250k worth of fields, and spent 250k on a forage harvest and header -- you'd probably produce twice as much silage overall per investment dollar (the amount of silage that comes out of corn is VERY high - so you'd only have half as much area, and corn grows more slowly than grass replenishes itself, and corns costs money to replant all the time, but you get like 8 times as much chaff from the same field as you do corn (or grass?), so I figure you'd get about double silage from corn as from grass .. maybe triple)
-- Thus, I guess I'm forced to say that BGA is probably a significantly better way to produce slurry for crop fertlisation than cows are (and since pigs produce less manure/slurry per cost, cows are better in terms of manure production and financial return) - at least initially
---- however I think a purely BGA route to this end bears significant risk in permanently crushing the price of silage, and is likely to reverse this baseline outcome (i.e. if you did this enough, probably cows would end up being better for high sustained volume compared to investment return since you'd end up getting nearly nothing for more silage after a time)
... thus I suspect the long term best answer is "do both"
1) Producing silage in the BGA is profitable without a doubt and worthy of productive effort. I view the additional production of slurry view this method as a bonus.
2) Cows primarily produce money via the milk. They also produce manure, but the 'value' of this manure is secondary. While it is true that I mainly keep adding to my cow/pig herds while thinking about "I need more manure for my fields", the reality is that these animals are profitable in their own right -- I do not view keeping cows/pigs as "a cheap way to get manure". Animals and feeding them is pretty expensive, but you get paid back and then have manure also.
3) If I wanted to look at animals vs the BGA PURELY in terms of "best way to get fertliser", then I think the BGA is by far the cheapest and easiest way to acquire large enough volume of slurry to do this.
-- acquiring enough cows/pigs to produce large volumes of manure/slurry is going to cost very large amounts of money for the animals themselves. Plus cost for a mixer, plus any extra equipment if you choose to do baling.
-- animals also consume feed. Pigs in particular eat a fair bit of corn which is otherwise saleable. Cows mainly eat grass or its derivatives/by-products (silage, TMR)
A couple examples of data to compare:
-- 100 cows cost 500,000 dollars, and produce roughly 25k each of slurry and manure per day by consuming around 40,000 units of grass/silage/straw. This size herd will give you about 40k worth of milk income in the same period. (Normal mode pricing)
-- 40k in grass (the amount you fed the cows in above example) costs you essentially nothing, but only produces perhaps 15k of slurry. Thus, to get the same 50k worth of fertlising manure, you'd need 120K+ of silage fed into the BGA per day. Interestingly, that would then produce probably 40k in profits (similar to your milk profit .. but you didn't have to spend 500k in animal costs)
-- if instead of buying 100 cows, you used that 500k to buy fields, and planted grass --- you would probably be able to generate (as a rough guess, I haven't looked at this closely) 250k+ in grass per day, which could be fed into the BGA yielding 80k profit plus 80k slurry -- or approximate double the manure and profit output of cows.
-- if you went with corn planting on 250k worth of fields, and spent 250k on a forage harvest and header -- you'd probably produce twice as much silage overall per investment dollar (the amount of silage that comes out of corn is VERY high - so you'd only have half as much area, and corn grows more slowly than grass replenishes itself, and corns costs money to replant all the time, but you get like 8 times as much chaff from the same field as you do corn (or grass?), so I figure you'd get about double silage from corn as from grass .. maybe triple)
-- Thus, I guess I'm forced to say that BGA is probably a significantly better way to produce slurry for crop fertlisation than cows are (and since pigs produce less manure/slurry per cost, cows are better in terms of manure production and financial return) - at least initially
---- however I think a purely BGA route to this end bears significant risk in permanently crushing the price of silage, and is likely to reverse this baseline outcome (i.e. if you did this enough, probably cows would end up being better for high sustained volume compared to investment return since you'd end up getting nearly nothing for more silage after a time)
... thus I suspect the long term best answer is "do both"
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