Brian Tucker’s farm in Wairarapa has it all – a dairy farm, piggery, roads, underpasses…and a solid effluent management system in place to keep it all ticking like clockwork…
Having a dairy farm and piggery there’s plenty of effluent on this farm, and Brian’s grandson Ollie Healey has become an expert at managing it all.
On the dairy side, effluent from the cow shed is collected in a large, oddly shaped effluent pond which is kept regularly stirred with a Nevada electric stirrer. Being such a unusual shape, they also use a Nevada PTO stirrer to give the areas around the edge a good mix prior to pumping.
The piggery also has its own effluent storage pond with Nevada electric stirrer to keep it well mixed. Effluent from the piggery is more fibrous and well…smellier than dairy effluent, so along with regular stirring Brian and Ollie have started to add PondBugs™ to the mix to help introduce more good bacteria and keep the smell down.
Brian bought his first Nevada slurry tanker around 7 years ago, and they haven’t looked back. In fact, with being so versatile they recently upgraded from a 14,700L to a 16,500L.
Ollie is very precise with his spreading. They have Tracmap connected to the tractor, and the controlled spread of the RainWave applicator on the slurry tanker means he can input the width of the spread and the system shows him exactly where to spread.
Watching Ollie whip the new 16,500L slurry tanker around the farm it hasn’t taken any time for him to get used to the increased size.
