How to Combat Effluent Odour

The Cause

It’s important to understand the reason your effluent might have a particularly strong smell to determine the best solution. The most common reasons for strong smelling effluent are:

• Stagnation – the effluent has been stored for a long time.
• Aeration – the effluent has been stored in unventilated storage, or below crust.
• Lack of biological activity – there’s not enough good bacteria to kill the odour producing bad bacteria.

Pump Regularly

Try to keep a good pumping regime to avoid effluent sitting too long in storage. As nutrients sit unused, they degrade, and like anything left to degrade, the odour increases the longer it is left.

Over Summer or when it’s dry, try to keep the pond/storage as low as possible. Not only will you be giving the ground a good dose of nutrients, but you’ll have plenty of storage available for when the wet season sets in.

Stir Often & Well

Giving the effluent a good stir not only works to prevent crust forming and solids settling, it also gives the effluent some needed aeration. Just like food left sitting in a container, a stagnant effluent pond, tank or bladder tank will start to form a strong odour.

Apply With Low Pressure Applicators

Lastly, if you do have smelly effluent, use a low-pressure irrigator or an applicator like a RainWave^TM for Slurry Tankers or Drag Hose Systems. These low-pressure systems minimise the amount of wind drift, so you’re less likely to get complaints from neighbours about the smell!

Keeping the neighbours happy!

Here from Fabian in this On-Farm success story on how he no longer has to offer his neighbours a free dinner so he can spread his effluent….

Give us a call today to chat about the best effluent management system for your farm.