# raw milk on fields



## Farmall706 (Sep 4, 2011)

I just read an article on useing raw milk for fertilizer. Claims that mixing 3 gallons with 17 gallons of water will do an acre. I know thats alot of calcium, but I still don't see it. Anyone have any experiance with this?


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## Nitram (Apr 2, 2011)

Think I would skip the milk and 100 x the water! its dry here! Martin


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## Farmall706 (Sep 4, 2011)

I hear that, we have on had about 3/4 inch since the first of May. Pretty bad when the ground crunches under your feet when you walk over it. Ponds are about dry and no grass to cut, even the praire grass is laying flat on the ground from heat exhaughtion, soryy can't spell tonight, been roofing all day.


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## Nitram (Apr 2, 2011)

Bad day for that here! Toasty out! use to build pools and houses when i was much younger. be carefull out there. No idea about the milk never heard of it but there are alot of guys on here with much more knowledge than me


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

Exhaustion (thank god for spell check), not sure about the milk, I can see the ad now with a farmer spaying a white substance out of sprayer and the farmer looks at you with a milk mustache and says "Got Milk"....


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## Mike120 (May 4, 2009)

Probably the Milk Marketing Board trying to break into the fertilizer business and high prices.


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## aawhite (Jan 16, 2012)

_We have done it on accident in the past. Had to dump 3,000 gallons of milk after our milker forgot to turn the cooling system on in the parlor. Milk was over 100 degrees all day. _

_We didn';t dilute it, just pumped it out straight to a liquid spreader, put it on a field of alfalfa/orchard grass mix, along the ridge that is usually drier, and poorer soil. We could definitely tell where the milk went! Couldn't say what was the contributing factor: minerals, milk solids breaking down, the extra moisture, etc. _


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## whitmerlegacyfarm (Aug 26, 2011)

A big diary farm a few miles away did that this past year had thousands of gallons of milk that was bad so they pumped it into there manure holding tanks and then spread it on the fields our whole valley had a terrible odor, people were callin the state police and everything and this was dead of winter when they did this. People even travelin the 4 lane highway a few miles away called in a report a foul odor lol.


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## Hay Patch (Oct 3, 2010)

Raw milk and other milk by products like ice cream waste are used as part of organic ferilizer programs. Works even better if molasses is added. I know a fellow up near Paris Tx. that swears milk did more to restore his field than anything else he did. Oh! and it far less expensive than commercial fertilizer.


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## Hayboy1 (Jul 19, 2008)

I sprayed 55 acres this past spring with the same numbers 3 gal milk to 17gal water. I then added a total of 2 gallons of liquid Molasses to the sprayer after I dilluted it in 5gal buckets with a homemade mixer on a drill. I truly thought it was a waste of my time to honest. We normally tend to start our first cutting around or just before Memorial Day. I sprayed it on a nice loamy soil and on some poorer heavy clay soils. Granted now, we had some perfect haying weather early on, but to be truthful, it was probably the nicest unfertilized hay I have ever put up. Cows went right for it, in fact pushed away 2nd cut Alfalfa, and 3rd cut O/A and dove at the first. I was quite surprised. But what really got me looking deeper into the theory, was that we had not any significant rain in over a month, but yet I managed to pull 1400 50lb bales of an 8 acre tract, then second crop I baled another 785 45lb bales and then after some rain, I pulled another 500 3rd off it late season. I know those are not exceptional rates, but this land has had no fertilizer or manure in years. I only did one application in early spring. I was impressed by the quick regrowth of the second crop as well as the lack of weeds I saw. MY Cost???? $100.00 My only regret is not doing a second and third application. Google fertilizing with raw milk and molasses. Very interesting read to say the least. I will certainly try again this spring on a lot more acres with multiple applications. Just need a bigger sprayer. And if you do try it, make sure you clean your sprayer two times instead of once, milk gets a tad nasty shall we say??


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

Hayboy1 said:


> I sprayed 55 acres this past spring with the same numbers 3 gal milk to 17gal water. I then added a total of 2 gallons of liquid Molasses to the sprayer after I dilluted it in 5gal buckets with a homemade mixer on a drill. I truly thought it was a waste of my time to honest. We normally tend to start our first cutting around or just before Memorial Day. I sprayed it on a nice loamy soil and on some poorer heavy clay soils. Granted now, we had some perfect haying weather early on, but to be truthful, it was probably the nicest unfertilized hay I have ever put up. Cows went right for it, in fact pushed away 2nd cut Alfalfa, and 3rd cut O/A and dove at the first. I was quite surprised. But what really got me looking deeper into the theory, was that we had not any significant rain in over a month, but yet I managed to pull 1400 50lb bales of an 8 acre tract, then second crop I baled another 785 45lb bales and then after some rain, I pulled another 500 3rd off it late season. I know those are not exceptional rates, but this land has had no fertilizer or manure in years. I only did one application in early spring. I was impressed by the quick regrowth of the second crop as well as the lack of weeds I saw. MY Cost???? $100.00 My only regret is not doing a second and third application. Google fertilizing with raw milk and molasses. Very interesting read to say the least. I will certainly try again this spring on a lot more acres with multiple applications. Just need a bigger sprayer. And if you do try it, make sure you clean your sprayer two times instead of once, milk gets a tad nasty shall we say??


Do you always use raw milk..We have milked cows our entire life and never tried this.. It.is never to late to try


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## Bob M (Feb 11, 2012)

Hayboy1, was this hay grown on some deep top soil ground? I have heard of some ground in New York that has 30 feet of top soil in the valleys were glaciers traveled. I would love to have yields like you are getting on my fertilized ground. Keep us updated!


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## Mike120 (May 4, 2009)

Hay Patch said:


> Oh! and it far less expensive than commercial fertilizer.


Corn used to be cheap until we started using it for energy. I better try this soon, 'cause when this gets out the price of milk is gonna shoot up. My neighbor is a dairy guy, I'll bet if I offer him a few cents more he'll sell me the raw milk.


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## Bob M (Feb 11, 2012)

Mike, I guess I will be making hugh amounts of money with our dairy herd, time to expand!!!!!!! LOL


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

Hayboy1 said:


> I sprayed 55 acres this past spring with the same numbers 3 gal milk to 17gal water. I then added a total of 2 gallons of liquid Molasses to the sprayer after I dilluted it in 5gal buckets with a homemade mixer on a drill. I truly thought it was a waste of my time to honest. We normally tend to start our first cutting around or just before Memorial Day. I sprayed it on a nice loamy soil and on some poorer heavy clay soils. Granted now, we had some perfect haying weather early on, but to be truthful, it was probably the nicest unfertilized hay I have ever put up. Cows went right for it, in fact pushed away 2nd cut Alfalfa, and 3rd cut O/A and dove at the first. I was quite surprised. But what really got me looking deeper into the theory, was that we had not any significant rain in over a month, but yet I managed to pull 1400 50lb bales of an 8 acre tract, then second crop I baled another 785 45lb bales and then after some rain, I pulled another 500 3rd off it late season. I know those are not exceptional rates, but this land has had no fertilizer or manure in years. I only did one application in early spring. I was impressed by the quick regrowth of the second crop as well as the lack of weeds I saw. MY Cost???? $100.00 My only regret is not doing a second and third application. Google fertilizing with raw milk and molasses. Very interesting read to say the least. I will certainly try again this spring on a lot more acres with multiple applications. Just need a bigger sprayer. And if you do try it, make sure you clean your sprayer two times instead of once, milk gets a tad nasty shall we say??


So what was the difference in yield from a check strip?


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## Lazy J (Jul 18, 2008)

I had a landlord that tried this on oure hay field and it was a huge waste of time and effort. We had three test strips across the field and harvested the test and controll strips separately, we had no differences in yield or quality.


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## Mike120 (May 4, 2009)

Lazy J said:


> I had a landlord that tried this on oure hay field and it was a huge waste of time and effort. We had three test strips across the field and harvested the test and controll strips separately, we had no differences in yield or quality.


Oh Damn....Bob M was gonna get rich selling milk as fertilizer and I was gonna get rich growing cheap hay. So much for those plans. Tell you what Bob, we'll get a box and both of us can put $20 bucks in it. I'll sell it to you for $30 and we both make a profit of $10. If we keep doing that, we'll get rich off the free money.


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## Hayboy1 (Jul 19, 2008)

Well I will answer as many questions as I can, though I do not claim to be an expert by any means. The concept is simple..basically on a teaspoon of dirt,you have roughly a billion micro-organisms living in that soil. They need to be fed. Whether you use manure, chicken litter, milk etc, it is all adding to the integrity of the soil. I don't think this is something that you will see an immediate response to, as opposed to a petroleum based fertilizer. I aslo don't think it is a miracle growth additive. Over time, I am confident you will see the overall improvement. I think on poorer soils you will see the biggest changes. We have stony, gravel like soils and some sandy loam soils. We also have heavy clay. An hour east of us in Ct river Valley, they have topsoil that runs a couple hundred feet deep in places.
From what I read, over the course of 45 days or so, you should gain roughly 1250lbs of dry matter by applying raw milk. It obviously has to be raw milk because the micro-organisms feed off the bacteria, then they produce roughly 130-150lbs/acre of Nitrogen. Lime is a key ingredient as well, so we are going to apply lime, cow manure, and raw milk simultaneously and see what happens. I think there are a few states that are requiring folks to have a permit to spray the milk from what I have heard.
I spoke with a guy in New Jersey and brought up the topic. He said almost every milk tank driver agreed that there is definitely a difference, where they wash out. Like Mike stated earlier, you could probably offer a dairy guy quietly a few more pennies than he is receiving from the milk company. I will definitely try it 3 times this year and will do so more test strips and have things tested as well.


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## UpNorth (Jun 15, 2009)

The amount of calcium in the milk would be a drop in the bucket compared to what you already have in the soil for Ca and what would normally be put on for lime.


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## prairie (Jun 20, 2008)

I know of one individual, who sprayed skim milk on his fields for several years. He sold creme and butter oil, and the skim milk was just left over. He started spraying it on a field just to get rid of it, with an increase in quality and yield, and a huge increase in palatebility. Unlike most commercial fertilizers, the raw milk feeds the soil microbes and plants, instead of feeding the plant and supressing or destroying soil microbes. Economical? I don't know. It was for the guy I knew because he was disposing of a waste byproduct.


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## Hayboy1 (Jul 19, 2008)

prairie said:


> I know of one individual, who sprayed skim milk on his fields for several years. He sold creme and butter oil, and the skim milk was just left over. He started spraying it on a field just to get rid of it, with an increase in quality and yield, and a huge increase in palatebility. Unlike most commercial fertilizers, the raw milk feeds the soil microbes and plants, instead of feeding the plant and supressing or destroying soil microbes. Economical? I don't know. It was for the guy I knew because he was disposing of a waste byproduct.


I am wondering if this is the same guy I read about. If it is, quite an interesting read.


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