Tuning Up Your Manure Storage: Mid-Summer Maintenance That Pays Off

While summer is flying by, now is the time to tune up your storage, not just your equipment.

Waiting until September to check your pit, pond, or tank can leave you scrambling. A quick mid-summer storage review can help avoid headaches later and get you ahead of both environmental and logistic risks.

1. Review How Full You Are

Like most years, rainfall in Iowa has been variable throughout the state, but many of our livestock producing areas have seen substantially more rainfall than average, with some pushing 8-inches of rainfall above normal through this point in the year. While a few portions of Iowa had to deal with abnormally high rainfall additions to outdoor manure, the dry summer and fall helped alleviate some of the stress of full storages come application season. While it is too soon to know what the rest of this summer and fall will bring, reviewing how full your manure storage is and assessing to your storage needs to make it to manure application season this fall, it is critical to ensure storage success. Figure 1 provides a map of Iowa rainfall through July 18th as compared to normal, indicating that some locations are trending about 8.5 inches more than normal since January.

To help put in perspective, what this amount of water of rain means, if you had a 150-foot diameter circular manure storage (the same as the ISU dairy) and received 8.5 inches of direct rainfall more than normal it would add 93,600 gallons more water than normal to the manure. This is approximately equivalent to the manure produced over the year by 13 dairy cows.

Figure 1. Comparison of January 1 to July 18th precipitation as compared to normal, indicating that some areas of Iowa have seen much higher rainfall than average through this period of the year.

2. Project Your Fall Application Window

If you are in a situation where your manure storage volume might be tight, start communicating with your custom applicator or cooperating landowners now. If you’re looking at needing an early application, it’s also time to review nitrogen stabilization strategies or soil nitrate retention tools. Cover crops are especially effective at capturing early applied nitrogen.

3. Inspect Safety Features & Clean Up Around the Storage

Manure often isn’t the first thing on our mind as we are busy with spring field work and then again with fall harvest, but with summer hopefully it gives some time to think about maintenance of the manure storage. You see it every day, but have you really looked deeply at it to see how it is working?

• Check fences for wear and areas that need repair.
•  Look over or add signs around access points to ensure safety around open storages or pits.
•  If you have a push ramp, make sure it is in good repair and will stop you from rolling into the pit as you are pushing in manure.
• Check over agitation and pump-out ports so they secured and in good repair so when it comes time to move them in the fall you can quickly get them out of the way.
•  Clear weeds and brush to improve visibility and reduce pest risk. Check for signs of erosion, cracking, or damage around embankments or pit walls.
• Evaluate roads and paths to the manure storage to ensure equipment can access critical areas and movement of mud to roadways will be minimized
• Review your emergency response plan; make sure items are up to date and you are prepared for pumping season with critical contact numbers.

Figure 2. Clearing away brush and debris and keeping the area around the manure tank mowed allows easier assessment of storage conditions and risks.

Bottom Line:

Just like a planter check in February saves stress in April, a manure storage tune-up now pays off in smoother, safer application this fall. You’ll avoid overflow risks, reduce emergency pumping costs, and give yourself time to plan smarter.