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Cullom, Illinois | Yes, confinement will give you sticker shock up front. But how much does bedding really cost? Used to bale all my wheat straw and sell it until I got my soil tests. Levels lowered by half in two years. Have you priced fertilizer lately? Is raking, baling, storing, shredding, piling, loading, and spreading free? I don't think so. Baler and shredder will cost close to $50,000 for good ones. I'm talking new, just for arguements sake. Spreaders for both bed pack and liquid will run about the same price. So lets call both barns a wash as far as costs. One is all up front, the other takes several years.
What sells me on the pit barn is handling the manure. Yes, you may have to add water. Run the gutters into the pit. But when I spread, I can take an analysis and using a flow controller, apply what my crop will need for next year. How do you do that with bed pack? If I'm getting 250 acres of fertilizer (3000 gallons per acre out of a 750,000 gallon pit), isn't that close to $25,000 value?(250 acres x $100 per acre fertilizer cost). Sure, dry manure has value, but how do you measure what amount you put on. And how long before Uncle Sam regulates that?
And to be honest, I don't have the time to bale, store, shred bedding every few days. Plus scrape lots and pile manure once every few weeks.
These are just my opinions. Not saying how others are doing it is wrong. I've fed cattle in an open dirt lot with a hundred year old barn for twenty years. Overhead costs are almost zero. But there are days in March when its 35 degrees, mud belly deep, 35 mph wind, and two inches of rain, that I know for a fact those cattle are going backwards. I've seen what technology has done to improve my crop yields and I think it's time I applied that to my livestock operation.
P.S. Can we discuss Harvestore silos next? Considering one of those too! :) | |
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Will a guy have to go to cattle conefinement buildings in the future?
