Page 8 - Australian Pork Newspaper

The FB Bossini B3 350 slurry tanker linked to a tractor and 6M ILGI disc tiller. Youngs Farm also uses a ripper and disc injector unit. Photos: Brandon Long
Brown gold for Mark Young of Youngs Farm at Wooroolin – filling his new 30,000L slurry tanker with effluent from the ponds at the 8000-animal piggery. He then applies it deep into the soil to minimise odour and improve soil fertility.
The custom 30,000L tanker was filled with ef- fluent from the ponds at the 8000 standard pig units piggery, which supplies SunPork at Kingaroy.
“One of the key features is the strong linkage on the back of the tanker allowing heavy implements to be attached.”
Mr Young’s next expe- rience with manure was when he got a job at Bell- grove Pork piggery at Gor- donbrook in Queensland.
“The ‘official’ fertiliser bill was getting larger and larger and I said to the family at the time, ‘We should be able to make as much money out of the ef- fluent as we do out of the contracting of the pigs’,” he said.
Youngs Farm ramps up pig manure program
BEN and Harry Young were pioneers of the South Burnett peanut in- dustry in the 1920s.
and machinery dealer to travel to one of the big- gest machinery expos in the world – Agritechnica in Hanover, Germany.
working in-crop with 91cm rows
logistics to take the pigs in and out of the piggery, but we also needed to make use of the effluent,” Mr Young said.
A century on, Ben’s grandson Mark Young is carrying on that entrepre- neurial spirit at his crop- ping and livestock opera- tion on a block adjacent to that of his forebears.
It took three trips to Eu- rope and plenty of meet- ings to find the right com- pany.
• Rear hydraulic linkage with 6t lift capacity. Working with manure
At that point, they were irrigating 200ha between hard hoses and one centre pivot.
Youngs Farm at Woo- roolin owner Mark, with his wife Sharon and chil- dren Jacqueline, Kristy and Harry, this year im- ported Australia’s first FB Bossini slurry tanker from Italy to help supercharge their farm.
“We wanted certain wheel spacings, capacity, linkage, a company that would deal with Australia, and all for the right price.
“There was one primary pond which was filled, and to solve that problem, Dad got the earthmovers in to knock up a second dam.
It then applies the ma- nure deep into the soil via a ripper or disc injector, which reduces odour, im- proves soil fertility, boosts crop yield and also saves them a significant amount of money on inputs.
The tanker has been equipped with an ILGI 6m disc tiller, a ripper that al- lows Mr Young to go 200- 300mm deep.
“We baled 10 acres and we got 100 5x4 round bales, and when you went out of the area to the one that wasn’t treated with the pig manure, it wasn’t even worth cutting or baling.
The investment is already paying off, with 2021 the first year the soil hasn’t re- ceived synthetic fertiliser.
“The dynamics of eve- rything involved in this – and the upsides in virtu- ally every direction from a farming point of view – I think are immense,” Mr Rackemann said.
“So, after that point Dad and I thought, ‘We really have to make more effort with our manure’, and not long after we built our first irrigation dam.”
Prior to their latest pur- chase, they did trial a bigger tanker at 15,000 litres from a local con- tractor.
“What comes out of the pigs’ backsides is worth $1 million a year in synthetic fertiliser,” Mr Young said.
Tanker highlights
Then at FarmFest one year, they bought a small travelling irrigator for $1500.
They ordered the FB Bossini B3 350 in October 2020 and it arrived via containershipinJulythis year.
• Imported Bossini 30,000L slurry tanker from Italy – these tankers range in size from 3500L to 40,000L
It would cover a swathe 15m wide and 200m long, so they started treating 4-8ha per year.
It didn’t have linkage but spread the slurry on top of the cultivation.
Sourcing the right ma- chine for the job
•Fills from effluent ponds at 8000 SPU pig- gery
Soon after, they grew their first ‘proper’ crop of irrigated corn – 12ha of C76 corn in the late 1980s to early 1990s.
“It took 10 minutes to load15,000L,ittook10-15 minutes to unload – we found we were only put- ting out around 15,000L/hr and we couldn’t even keep up to the production of the piggery,” Mr Young said.
While it sounds a straightforward import process, Mr Young and his family, friends and agronomist spent months researching and talking with Oz Value AG Ma- chinery state manager Carl Rackemann, who imported the machine.
• Variable rate, but cur- rently set to release slurry at 15,000L/ha
Thatpromptedthefarmer
• Wheels and wheel spacing designed for
“At that point, we only put it on the paddocks close to the piggery be- cause we just didn’t have the infrastructure to get it away from the piggery.”
“It was a fairly exhaus- tive process,” Mr Racke- mann said.
“My first experience with pig manure was when I came home,” Mr Young said of his return from school in 1982.
They blended the fresh- water dam with the pig dam in an 80/20 ratio, in- jecting it into the irriga- tion system or putting it through the hard hose ir- rigators.
“Bossini ticked every box.
His father and the neigh- bours decided to go halves in buying a pump, some aluminium pipes and a single stand sprinkler.
They’ve also built a disc injector unit for in-crop ap- plications.
“It was very integral to the building of the piggery that we could get not only a contract income, we could also utilise the fertiliser on the farm.”
• Potential to save the farm $1m a year in ferti- liser costs
“That yielded, from fence to fence, five tonnes per acre, which at that stage was very ground-breaking in the district to get such a big yield of corn,” he said.
“You’d go all day – a 12-hour day – and the dam would drop 2”, so that wasn’t really working for us.”
•Pumpfillsthetankerin three minutes
• Three axles – one and two are steering axles
From there he attended a field day hosted by Uni- versityofQueenslandpro- fessor Mike Bell, who was discussing the declining fertility in the land and the deep placement of fer- tiliser.
“In time, that dam filled.”
While they saw reason- ably good results, they used “quite a lot of water” and got a few odour com- plaints.
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Naturally ahead
They grew big yields of navy beans and peanuts and found grass and lu- cerne especially responded to the pig manure.
“So that probably bore the idea of, ‘We’ve got a pond, we’ve got land, we’ve got manure – what do we do with it?’” Mr Young said.
Big picture vision
In 2012, the family de- cided to carry out a large expansion of the piggery from 1000 standard pig units to 8000.
With soil fertility up and input bills down, Mr Young wants to add to their peanuts, grains, forage and livestock.
“When we first looked at it, for the deal to stack up, we needed more than a contract income,” Mr Young said.
The new venture? Macadamias.
First appeared on
“We felt we needed the
queenslandcountrylife. com.au
Page 8 – Australian Pork Newspaper, December 2021
OzValue AG Queensland state manager Carl Rackemann and MarkYoung.
www.porknews.com.au