Protected Urea on the Kildalton College Farm
In Kildalton College, protected urea has been used on the college farm for the past 3 years with no urea or straight CAN being used. It is delivering yield, lower costs and is reducing GHG and ammonia emissions. Find out more in this video from Jamie Cahill, Lecturer at Kildalton College
The livestock enterprises on the farm consist of a spring calving dairy herd, a spring calving suckler herd and a mid season flock of ewes. The whole farm is stocked at approximately 2.5 livestock units per hectare so the requirement for a good supply of high quality grass in early spring and throughout the year is fundamental to the running of the farm.
Protected Urea benefits
Protected urea is performing extremely well on the farm. Since the product is protective this allows us to spread during drier conditions. We are not as weather dependent as we would have been when using urea and CAN so we can use it all year round.
Annual tonnage of grass grown has not fallen since moving to the use of protected urea. In fact, over the last three years annual tonnage has increased from 12 tons to 14 tons per DM/ha. This is also attributed to correcting P, K and Lime on the farm along with the reseeding plan with clover.
Nonetheless, protected urea played a part in this and has proven its reliability for yield to us. Grass quality, graze outs and regrowths has been the same as when using urea and CAN and we have found it easy to use on spreading, much the same as normal urea. When we look at the costs per kg of nitrogen, protected urea is 20% cheaper than CAN and this is an extremely important factor in maintaining farm profit.
Given that current prices of fertiliser are at an all-time high, this makes it a very cost effective product.
With protected urea performing so well on the farm to date, we have made a decision this year to move away from using any fertiliser that contains CAN, so the only compounds to be used will be the likes of 0-7-30 or 0-10-20 with all nitrogen being spread in the form of protected urea only. This demonstrates a very good testament to the product and shows our trust in it going forward.
Using protected urea is a win-win for us!
Find out more about Kildalton COllege here