MuckSmart is about making the best of farm produced slurries and slurries. This doesn't start with the slurry pit! Nutrient management is a cycle around the farm.

Did you know that only about 20% of the nitrogen fed to the cow is converted to milk!

The remaining 80% is recycled! Managing the cows ration and silage quality can increase that efficiency to 30% which can have significant cost savings.

So at Mucksmart we start with DietSmart which is looking at diet management, silage quality etc. Making sure that the major nutrients, in particular Nitrogen is used efficienty in the diet then significant savings can be made.

MuckSmart workshop participants can have their herds Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) measured for free.

Nitrogen is very important for making the milk proteins. ADAS have done some research which means that we can measure the efficiency of Nitrogen in diet.

• Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE)
• Improve from 20% (average) to 30% (good) and SAVE 1.4p /kg milk

HOW:

• Only apply 'crop requirement' fertiliser which means accounting for muck applications
• Rapid wilting of silage
• Use good silage inoculants
• Use high sugar grasses
• Improve protein ration formulation
• Feed Efficiency (FE) - 2 to 3 litres of milk for no more feed, reducing nitrogen in muck by 20% and increase daily margin over feed by as much as 80p/cow.