Slurry Tanker: Ross’ Slurry Tanker Does It All!

The two farms have quite different effluent storage set-ups. Ross’ farm has two Herd Homes® and 3 effluent ponds, while the other farm has a 5,000,000L pond. So there’s a lot of effluent to manage.

Ross was looking for a solution to cover a number of things:

1. Previously having discharge consent, Ross needed a new way to manage effluent on his farm.
2. He wanted a way to efficiently manage effluent across both farms himself without needing to get contractors in.
3. The effluent from the sharemilked farm is very thick and a pump couldn’t handle it.
4. Pumping out of the Herd Homes® was disruptive and inefficient.

To clean out the Herd Homes® Ross had been taking the cows out, lifting the grates, and getting a contractor in to dig it out and spread with a solids spreader.

‘It would take over a week and the cows can’t go in, so it was really inefficient.’
Ross Clark – Dairy Farmer, Taranaki

After learning a bit more about Ross’ situation, Mike at Nevada suggested a slurry tanker to solve the issues across both farms. A slurry tanker would be able to clean out the Herd Homes® as well as the thicker slurry in the tank. He’d also be able to spread when and where he wanted.

‘Now we can just leave the cows in there [Herd Homes®], lift a couple of grates, give it a stir, and suck it all out with the slurry tanker. We can just do what we want now, and it’s a lot quicker.’

Ross’ nice new tractor could easily handle a 20,150L Nevada slurry tanker which would also be a good size to minimise loads around the two farms. Midhurst experiences high rainfall, so a tridem axle is ideal for spreading the weight across 6 wheels and minimising the impact on softer soils.

‘The Central Taranaki farm is a wet farm, and I’ve taken it through a few wet spots down on the coast, and you wouldn’t know you were pulling it through.’

Ross did shop around at other slurry tanker options, but ultimately chose to go for a Nevada 20,150L tandem slurry tanker with loading accelerator.

‘It has everything we wanted – Auto-fill, 8” sucker line, and the pricing was very competitive.’

Efficiency was clearly a key factor for Ross, and he’s been impressed with how fast, easy and accurate the slurry tanker is…

‘It fills in less than 4 minutes, and the RainWave^TM applicators are just real easy. We go about 4km/h and it’s got a very even spread. It’s real simple and it works well.’