Weather Variability and Storage Capacity: Are You Designed for the Year You Actually Get?

 

We don’t farm averages. We farm variability. Livestock produce manure every day, mostly predictably. Weather adds water whenever it wants. Storage has to handle both. If we want fall application into cooling soils to remain an agronomic decision, not a reaction to storage pressure, we need to run the math now, not in September.

In our Spring Storage Planning article, we talked about the concept. Here, I want to punch some numbers and run the math.

Start with manure production.

How many head do you have? How many gallons per head per day are you generating? How many days until November 1?

Swine Finishing

For finishing swine in a deep pit, this is relatively predictable. Multiply head count by gallons per head per day and by days to your desired fall window, then divide by the surface area of your pit. Finishing pigs in a wean-finish barn, relatively tight in terms of water use, are often around 1 gallon per pig per day (your mileage may vary — I see barns from 0.85 up to 1.4 gallons per head per day). As I write this on February 23, there are 251 days until November 1. That’s roughly 300,000 gallons of manure.  doesn’t feel like much until you convert it to inches of pit depth. Have a 50x 190 barn holding 1200 head, that’s 51 inches of manure. Do you have that in your barn?

Liquid Beef

For liquid beef deep pit systems, it’s the same kind of math, just change the manure production number. Deep pit beef barn, put your manure production at around 6.5 gallons per head per day. That’s about 7.3 feet of storage space needed. But now we introduce uncertainty.

Are roof downspouts tied into the system? Over the next 251 days we average about 30 inches of rain. If about 80% of this turns into runoff and you are catching water in the pit from half your downspouts, that’s another foot of rainwater added. Do you have 8 feet of usable space so you can make it to your fall application window?

Liquid Dairy

For dairy, you add layers. Manure volume. Parlor wash water. Loafing lot runoff. Silage bunker runoff and leachate. What is the shape of the manure storage?

Let’s start around 22 gallons per head per day for manure and generated wash water. Looking at the ISU dairy — no loafing area outside, so I’m in luck. Silage bunker runoff is directed through vegetative filter strips. Yes, I chose this farm to make it easier.

With around 400 cows, I need roughly 18 feet of slurry storage space in our tank to get to November, plus whatever rainfall accumulates on the surface, maybe close to zero in a dry year, maybe several inches or more in a wet one.

But what if we were also handling runoff from the silage bunker area? That’s around 40,000 square feet. If roughly 80% of rainfall becomes runoff, I’d need close to another 5 feet of storage space in our manure storage.

If your projected level in September or October approaches your limit, the fall window is already compromised. Planning now can save some headaches latter.

Is Spring a Strategic Drawdown?

If the math is tight, what is the plan? Is our best approach to move some manure this spring to protect our fall window? If you do get full before November, what will you do? Do you have acres available? Are you confident harvest will start early? Will cover crops be established in time to receive early fall manure and protect water quality? This is not an argument that everyone should switch to spring application. It is an argument that some operations may need to use spring strategically to protect fall.

Fall application can work very well, if we actually reach cooling soil temperatures. That only happens when storage capacity gives us the ability to wait. Run the numbers. Then decide intentionally.

Why Booster Pump Placement Matters Near Streams

Umbilical manure application has become a go-to option for moving large volumes of manure efficiently while keeping heavy tanks out of the field. But with long hose runs, connections, and high pressures, failures can and do happen. One of the more concerning scenarios is a hose rupture or leak near a stream or drainageway.

Where we place the booster pump relative to that stream can make a big difference in how much manure is released if a failure occurs, and whether that release becomes an environmental incident or not. Hopefully you’ve heard the best management practice is to place the booster pump across the stream so the pressure is lower in the hose as it crosses the stream, but why?

The Scenario

Imagine an umbilical system crossing a small stream. Somewhere near the stream crossing, the hose develops a hole. This could be from abrasion, a weak spot, damage during setup, or even normal wear. The key question is:

·         Is that section of hose under high pressure or low pressure when the failure occurs?

That depends entirely on where the booster pump is located.

Two Booster Pump Options

Option 1: Booster pump on the near side of the stream

·         Pump → high-pressure hose → stream crossing → toolbar

Option 2: Booster pump on the far side of the stream

·         Pump → high-pressure hose → toolbar

·         Stream crossing is on the suction / low-pressure side of the booster

From a manure movement perspective, both setups can work. From a spill risk perspective, they are very different in how quickly we are going to leak manure.

Figure 1. Demonstration of how to fix a leak in an umbilical hose at the Manure Expo.

 

Why Pressure Matters When a Hose Leaks

The flow rate through a hole is directly related to pressure. For a small hole or tear, the leak rate is approximately:

Where:

QL is the leak flow rate

Cd is the discharge coefficient (typically 0.6 to 0.7 for sharp-edged holes, which we will assume (thought it does mean there is enough pressure to keep the hose rigid, which may not actually be the case

AL is the area of the leak (the cross sectional area of the hole)

Delta p is the pressure difference inside the pipe versus outside, which I’m being lazy and assuming doesn’t chance from the pre-leak conditions compared to when the leak starts (it does change and the pressure will go done, but how much depends on the relative resistances and gets a bit more math heavy then we need).

Rho is the density of the fluid

That square-root relationship is important. If pressure increases by a factor of four, the leak rate roughly doubles, and that is the basis of the recommendation. By controlling the location of the booster pump, we are controlling the pressure should a leak occur in the worst possible location, the hose in the stream.

A Simple Pressure Comparison

Let’s put some reasonable numbers to this.

Typical umbilical operating pressure downstream of a booster pump: 120 psi

Pressure upstream (suction side) of a booster pump: 30 psi

Let’s assume a 1” diameter hole, that manure has the same density of water, and we’ll set C_d = 0.65.

Option 1

Option 2

 

All that to say, by quadrupling the pressure (120 psi vs 30 psi) we doubled the rate of leakage (212 gpm vs 106 gpm).

 A low-pressure leak may be slow, noticeable, and more easily stopped before reaching water

Why the Stream Crossing Should Be Low Pressure

Placing the booster pump across the stream ensures that the hose segment near the waterway is operating at the lowest pressure in the system. That does three important things:

·         Reduces leak flow rate if damage occurs

·         Buys response time to shut down the system

·         Limits environmental consequences if manure reaches the stream

This is a classic example of risk-based design: assuming failure can happen and designing the system so that when it does, the consequences are minimized.

Positioning booster pumps so that environmentally sensitive areas, streams, ditches, intakes, and tile outlets, are exposed to as low-pressure hose as practically possible.

Practical Takeaways for Applicators

·         Always identify stream crossings during hose layout

·         Place booster pumps after the stream crossing, not before to minimize risk should a break occur.

 One last thought, is there a tank equivalent to this? Yes. If loading near the barn or in the field, look for the location that offers the least risk should a tank overflow occur. In particular this means looking for surface inlets around the loading area and trying to move as far from them as possible.

We can’t prevent every spill, but we can manage to minimize their occurrence and any negative environmental impact they may have.