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| You shouldn't value it until after you have the sample in hand of what was actually applied. You should develop your valuation matrix before you start....I would value it based on 1st year available nutrients.
Most importantly, you need to know who is going to apply it and how it is going to be done.
We have a pig farm and pump all of our own manure through a drag hose system and also haul a few fields with the spreader tank. Our corn after soybeans gets manure and then 10 gal of 32% at planting as the only fertilizer. It has been a learning experience and we made a lot of mistakes along the way to get to that point.
First, you and/or your applicator needs to have a flowmeter on the spreader. I doubt you would settle for someone applying NH3 without a monitor. It is impossible to know what you are doing without the flowmeter. The spreader does not unload consistently and the viscosity of the product changes, too. I doubt you would hire someone to apply NH3 who didn't have a monitor. You shouldn't hire a manure hauler, either.
Secondly, with a custom applicator, watch them carefully. I have seem some custom haulers for which every tank runs out at the same place in the field. That is really suspicious. I have never had two spreader loads that are empty at the exact same point in the field. An applicator that is actually paying attention will have all different lengths of tracks in the field and then go back to fill in the missing parts.
If I were buying manure that was applied by a custom applicator, I would demand samples and an "as applied" map from something like an insight. If you're applying it yourself, obviously you don't need that.
We apply about 3.5 million gallons to our own land. Our dragline has a flowmeter that is hooked to a Raven sprayer monitor to get instantaneous application rate. Our spreader has a Raven control with automatic rate control. You cant do it correctly without. When we are pumping through the hose, we continuous take samples through the field....then we pool the smaples and send one in for every 20 acres.
We use this lab for our samples www.stearnsdhialab.com We put the sample in the mail and they email the results back in about 2 days.
I'm glad to help if you have more questions.
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Hog manure applied in fall
