GIANTS Software - Forum

Paco_86 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 2:51 pm Hello! I'd like to play with realism, so I've some questions for farmers in real life (or if you know about it ).

1) Do you spread lime? When?
2) Do you spread manure, slurry or both? When?
3) If you use chemical fertilize, when? Solid or liquid one?
Thanks!

Good Afternoon,

I grew up on a dairy farm in northwestern Wisconsin and farming is in my blood. I would be doing it for real had I not experienced a back injury.

As to your questions, my dad seldom spread lime but he did once in a while. I'm not sure what made him decide to spread lime and when to spread it but I think it had something to do with what the agronomist told him after running soil samples.

On your question of whether or not to spread slurry or manure or both, it kind of depends on what sort of system the farm is set up with. On our dairy farm, we only had a system where we had manure and we had to clean the barn by turning on a chain and running the manure into a manure spreader. We didn't have any set up for slurry on our farm but I knew farmers who did have what was called a manure pit where they stored manure from their cattle. Some farmers also owned a manure spreader that they used to clean out pins that were not connected to the slurry system.

On your question of whether to use liquid or solid fertilizer, it also depends what type of planter the farmer is set up with. We only had a corn planter that used solid fertilizer. However, we occasionally had someone from the local co-op come out and spray liquid fertilizer.

I hope my little bit of insight helps you in your quest for a realistic farming experience. I also like to play fs19 with as much realism as possible.

Thank you,

Joel

garyst wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 10:28 pm Maybe try to see if you could find some YouTube videos of farms in Southern Spain where you are from and it might give you some ideas on some of the field practices more common to your area.

I don't think so. 1) The map is Chellington and this is not the spanish atmosphere. 2) Spanish people don't like farming at all. I don't know why, because this is a very good country for crops and fruits. With these lands, we don't have any machine brand, only 2 old tractors: Barreiros and Ebro. Now, farmers use modern John Deere, NH, etc.

garyst wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 4:12 pm

DirectCedar wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 3:45 pm

garyst wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 3:19 pm 2. Never seen a farmer in my life use manure for fertilizer here in Central Louisiana. Even farmers who have cattle don't spread it on their fields.

Hi Gary,
What do they do with solid manure in LA then? Up here it is becoming a significant issue finding enough land within economic transportation distance of large feedlots to apply all the beef manure.

Not sure what they do with it. The cattle farmers here are not very big. Most have about 30 to 40 cows. I do notice they rotate them from pasture to pasture every now and then. I never had alot of interest in animal farming so I don't pay too much attention to how they farm them. I just notice that the farmers who have cattle and row crops farm their ground the same way the other farmers who don't have cows do. And I have never seen a manure spreader or slurry spreader being used here before or even by a farm. I did see one antique one for sale on the side of the road before but it looked like it was just being used as a decoration in someone's yard to hold some flower pots.

So what you spread if you have organic plants?

Paco_86 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 2:51 pm Hello! I'd like to play with realism, so I've some questions for farmers in real life (or if you know about it ).

1) Do you spread lime? When?
2) Do you spread manure, slurry or both? When?
3) If you use chemical fertilize, when? Solid or liquid one?
Thanks!

1, Sort of. Australia is a baron area, and lime is around 150km away to buy. It's 45$ au per tonne, which is to dear. Doesn't sound like much but you need to put it on, 2 tonne to the hectare rate. Lime gets applicated once every 3 years where we farm, some stretch it out to ten years, but the ground doesn't like it and goes all sandy.

2, Not really. I help farm on one of the most marginal places on the earth and we farm 1000 acre paddocks at a time. Australia isn't really that advanced and we don't have nearly as many dairy farms as most nations do. There is one dairy farm in our region, and he's next door to us, the guy who owns the older agrotrons I talk about sometimes. He has all jeantil equipment for that, and is forever chasing parts. Good gear but there is only one distributor in the country. And the spread width of slurry tanks and Muck chuckers isn't enough, we want 50ft, not 15, so that's why it hasn't quite taken off here.

3, Yes, plenty of it. Chemical, ie roundup is one of the only ways to eliminate cat heads, spiny burr grass and plume thistles for example. Our neighbour is certified organic but I forever see him sitting in the tractor with a real early Gendore-einbock star wheel tiller. As for fert, we do use Beaulieu rum, a fertilizer by product, which goes through your spray rig and then the ground is fertilized for that week. You need up to 6 passes of it over the year, or that's what ive found gives the best result anyway. Solid fertilizer like urea, phosphate and calciprill are expensive, but for smaller irrigation lots they are the key to success.

Paco_86 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 2:51 pm Hello! I'd like to play with realism, so I've some questions for farmers in real life (or if you know about it ).

1) Do you spread lime? When?
2) Do you spread manure, slurry or both? When?
3) If you use chemical fertilize, when? Solid or liquid one?
Thanks!

It depends very much where you live. As an example.. In Sweden..

1. When its needed, vary alot, can be years between.
2. Both, but most liquid manure. (Its alot of that here, much more than using liquid chemicals) After a field is harvest, also in spring before tilage, or at the same time with injector. Its forbbiden to spread any manure in the winter.
3. awhile after youve sown. Depends on growts. Not really sure about it, it vary alot.

Adamvet wrote: ↑Fri Apr 02, 2021 5:18 am

garyst wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 4:12 pm

DirectCedar wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 3:45 pm

Hi Gary,
What do they do with solid manure in LA then? Up here it is becoming a significant issue finding enough land within economic transportation distance of large feedlots to apply all the beef manure.

Not sure what they do with it. The cattle farmers here are not very big. Most have about 30 to 40 cows. I do notice they rotate them from pasture to pasture every now and then. I never had alot of interest in animal farming so I don't pay too much attention to how they farm them. I just notice that the farmers who have cattle and row crops farm their ground the same way the other farmers who don't have cows do. And I have never seen a manure spreader or slurry spreader being used here before or even by a farm. I did see one antique one for sale on the side of the road before but it looked like it was just being used as a decoration in someone's yard to hold some flower pots.

So what you spread if you have organic plants?

No one really does any organic farming over here. A few have started to try cover crops but still burn them off with herbicide and do a couple tillage passes before planting in the spring. Also had a few farmers tried doing no till planting but only for milo after soybeans in the early 2000's but have since moved back to conventional tillage for planting their milo.

Sometimes we will plant beans no till into corn stalks, and we even did no till corn on corn once

We no-till nearly all our corn into farmland with harvested triticale, and sometimes we no-till triticale into our corn ground. We work up the seedbed really smooth for alfalfa though since that's a perennial crop and we drive over that a lot

I'm in East Anglia, in the UK, and we are on chalky boulder clay, the same ridge of chalk that makes up the Downs and the white cliffs of Dover, so we don't need lime, if anything farmers here will use vegetation-based compost that tends to be more acidic. To the north there are the fens which are peat and silt, I'm not sure if they lime their fields up there. There's not a lot of animal farming around here, we are mostly cereals, OSR, sugar beet and kitchen crops. Further west there's more dairy but I believe most of those of those do slurry as it is easier to mechanise. The most common fertiliser regime around here is solid, prilled, drilled with the winter crops, then again early/mid spring with maybe a nitrogen drizzle later on.

Depends entirely on the country, climate, economics and what type of farm.

On UK land lot of Northern European lowland/arable/mixed farms:

Lime- depends on soil and what soil tests say. almost certainly not as often as game makes you!

if you are a dairy farmer with cows not on straw (or indoor pigs) the getting rid of all the slurry is an issues and of course is free fertilser so you use that. Still might use something out of bag as well for sone crops/some nutrient needs.

if keeping cattle on straw then you have manure to get rid off. (in reality you would dig it out of shed, dump in pile in filed to let rot a bit then spread...)


In UK and EU , unless you have gone for certified 'organic' I reckon some form of artificial ferty and herbicide/insecticide used on most farms

Used to be a misplaced Mwal quote here. But now it’s gone. Like all good things must come to an end.

Did you post in the wrong thread?

That’s weird I didn’t think so but apparently, unquote me so I can delete it myself please

Mwal wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 4:50 am That’s weird I didn’t think so but apparently, unquote me so I can delete it myself please

Done.