Implications of the Nitrates Directive for a Suckler Farm in the West

All of the details included in this article refer to an actual 60 cow suckler farm in the West of the Provience.

A summary of the main point of the Nitrates Directive has been sent out to farm businesses recently. A copy is available of the NDAP Summary poster (PDF 208 KB).

The Farm

The 60 ha (150 ac) farm is in a severely disadvantaged area (SDA). 60 Suckler cows (Sim. or Lim. cross) are kept. Most of the cattle are taken through to beef with the rest sold as strong stores. The land type means that, in practice, the cows are housed from October to March / April. Overwintering or outwintering of cattle is not an option. 100 lambs are brought on for winter grazing.

Closed Slurry Spreading Periods
Slurry Storage
Dirty Water
Nitrogen Livestock Manure Limits
Chemical Nitrogen (N) Fertiliser Limits
Chemical Phosphorus Fertiliser
Land application restrictions
Record Keeping

In this area it is very rare for the ground conditions during the closed period to be suitable for spreading. There are some years when there’s a chance to get out after Christmas but the farmer can’t depend on it and so storage has to allow for this.

The farm has enough housing for the present number of stock although it can be cramped at calving. The DARD slurry storage calculations indicated that the farm had sufficient storage for 18 weeks, including dirty water from the open silage pit. Farm Nutrient Management Scheme Storage Workbook (PDF 210 KB).

Additional storage will have to be built to achieve 22 weeks. However the farmer isn’t convinced that 22 weeks storage would give him sufficient storage in the event of poor spreading conditions in and early Spring.

For this reason the farmer has applied to build a tank under the Farm Nutrient Scheme that, he has estimated, will give him twice the extra storage that he needs to achieve 22 weeks.

The extra capacity will provide insurance in case of a particularly bad year. However the farmer admits that it’s likely that if a shed is built on top of the tank, extra stock will do away with this insurance capacity.

There are no livestock in uncovered yards during the winter. So the only dirty water produced on the farm is runoff from the unroofed silo pit when it is opened. A separate effluent tank is being constructed under the FNMS and this will hold effluent during the summer. Once emptied in the autumn, this tank will be used as a dirty water tank in the winter. Because it is to be used as an effluent tank it will be built to SAFFO specification.

In practice the nitrogen (N) livestock manure limits act as a stocking rate limit based on the N produced by the different classes of livestock. The overall limit is 170 KG of livestock N per hectare. This farm is quite intensively stocked for a DA farm with on average:

This is a standard stocking rate of 1.55 Cow equivalents / ha. In terms of N produced the calculation is:

The limit of 170 KG per ha the N loading is not likely to restrict this farm and for most beef & sheep farms this limit is not likely to restrict their stocking rates.

The chemical N fertiliser limits for 2007 are 239 KG N per ha. This is approximately equivalent to 7 x 50 KG bags of CAN /Chalk per acre.

With a relatively high stocking rate and very little clover in the swards, 27 tonnes of chemical fertiliser were used on this farm last year. This works out at an overall N use of 96 KG N per ha.

The Nitrates Directive permits the use of chemical phosphorus (P) fertiliser if soil analysis indicates a requirement. A requirement is indicated by a soil analysis index of 2 or less for P. The table below give some of the recommendations.

The majority of the fields on this farm were analysed in the past two years and most have a P index of 0 or 1. Only two fields have an index of 2.

This means that the present policy of using 20.10.10 and 27.5.5 fertiliser where required can be continued. The soil analysis results will be relevant for 4 years from the date of sampling.

The restrictions on not spreading within 10 M of a waterway will slightly limit the application of slurry on some smaller fields as most fields are bounded by sheughs and drains.

The application rate limits of 4500 gallons per acre are well above the rates that are presently used – usually 1500 gallons per acre.

The only additional records that will have to be kept will be a record of the amount of phosphorus fertiliser applied in fields if sown.. The rest of the information required by the Nitrates Directive is already available through IACS, herd and flock records and fertiliser receipts.

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