Fertrell Blog

Manure is generally considered affordable and if you are a dairy, poultry, or hog farmer, you have lots of it and want to use it. Even if you don't have your own livestock, producing a ready supply of manure, most farmers use it on their fields. Applying manure to your fields is part of maintaining good soil fertility because it contains nutrients, builds organic matter, and inoculates the soil with biology. This is one component of a typical sustainable soil management practice, but when farmers try to use manure alone, in place of fertilizers and soil amendments, growing goals and expectations are not met. The primary reason for this disappointment is that manure doesn’t provide all that your soil needs to produce nutrient dense crops. Additionally, using manure can increase weed pressure and contain unwanted residues.

There are a whole lot of reasons why a cow's somatic cell count (SCC) may be on the rise. Farmers would like to find blame with Water, Grain mix, minerals, etc. when actually SCC is 90% management and environmental. Two of the major areas that cause somatic cell issues are Poor Bedding/Wet Ground Conditions and Stress. These two areas are often overlooked, but these are the things that will weaken the immune system allowing for higher SCC. It reduces the cow’s ability to fight off infections. Some of the major areas we look at are: