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Confined livestock systems are the primary source of excessive livestock waste concentrations.
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Manures and bedding accumulate, making them vulnerable to rain that will carry bacteria and nutrients offsite.
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The result is poor water quality below the livestock confinement area. Alga blooms and fish kills often result from the elevated nutrient and bacteria levels.
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One of the keys to an animal waste system is to keep clean water out of the system. The less water you have to handle the easier it will be to manage the system. Here buildings are guttered.
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Water from the buildings and up slope is directed into this cattle guard equiped with an underground pipe. In some applications a diversion may be used.
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All of the clean water can now be safely discharged past the confinement area.
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Next, all liquids from the lot is contained. Here an elevated exit prevents dirty water from escaping.
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Just below the confinement area a diversion is used to catch all water coming from the lot. A underground pipe is used to drain effluent into a storage facility.
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If a liquid sewage lagoon is used, a diversion like in the previous picture is important to settle out solids. This way a filtering pipe can be used to keep soilds out of the lagoon.
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All liquids are then held in a lagoon or other storage device until properly spread on cropland or pastures.
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In this system, the lagoon uses a gravity flow pipe to empty the effluent. Others, a pump will be necessary .
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A honey wagon is merely backed up to the outlet and carefully filled for spreading on fields.
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Next, provisions must be made to handle the manure.
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With this dairy operation a concreted lot was best for moving the manures to a collection area. A secondary benefit is better animal health by keeping the cows out of mud.
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Generally, two months or more capacity for manure storage must be planned to accomodate times when manure cannot be spread in fields.
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If the animal waste system is handling the solids separate from the liquids, then the manure is loaded into a spreader for applying to fields. There are systems however where both the solids and liquids are combined into a slurry, pumped into tanks, then spread on or injected into fields.
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Before applying animal waste or any other nutrient to fields, be sure and have a soil test done. This will insure over application does not occur.
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