# Hydrolyzed fish on hayground/pasture



## Hokelund Farm (Feb 4, 2014)

Anyone using hydrolyzed fish on their fields? I'd like to avoid using synthetic/chemical fertilizer and from what I've heard this is a pretty good option. The way I understand it is you spray it on both established stands and bare ground before seeding.

Neptunes Harvest seems like one of the better companies selling it.


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## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

Save your money....wasn't enough NP or K in that 5 gallon bucket to grow mold....and for $200.

Regards, Mike


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

http://www.neptunesharvest.com/hf-191.html

With the anylisis of 2-4-1 its not worth $1 let alone $43


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## Hokelund Farm (Feb 4, 2014)

Are there any decent alternatives to synthetic fertilizers?


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## deadmoose (Oct 30, 2011)

Manure or litter.


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## hog987 (Apr 5, 2011)

Hokelund Farm said:


> Are there any decent alternatives to synthetic fertilizers?


Manure maybe milk. 
Yes that other fertilizer does not have very much for nutrients. But also have to consider any biological parts of it. Will it help increase soil bacteria?. Some stuff like this just might. The only problem is they will still charge too much for it. The only place it might be economical is the wife's flower garden so she has pretty flowers all summer and is happy. But keep your eye open. Something might come along thats economical. How many acres are you looking to cover?.


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## Hokelund Farm (Feb 4, 2014)

hog987 said:


> Manure maybe milk.
> Yes that other fertilizer does not have very much for nutrients. But also have to consider any biological parts of it. Will it help increase soil bacteria?. Some stuff like this just might. The only problem is they will still charge too much for it. The only place it might be economical is the wife's flower garden so she has pretty flowers all summer and is happy. But keep your eye open. Something might come along thats economical. How many acres are you looking to cover?.


Yes they do talk a lot about the bacteria. I will have some manure from this winter but probably only enough to cover about 15 acres or so.

10 acres of alfalfa/grass mix already established, 10 more will be seeded in spring, and 20 in a pasture/grazing mix.

so 40 total will need coverage


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## Hugh (Sep 23, 2013)

One way I visualize how nutrients / soils work is the following, and this might help you. (Please understand, I'm not talking down to you, this is how I talk to myself, how I think about it.)

Think about how things have worked for millions of years. Animals eat plants and other animals. These animals roam around and their manure is scattered about. These animals eventually die and the minerals that make-up their bodies return to the soil. Over millions of years and billions of animals, the fertility becomes widely dispersed.

If you look at your field, imagine that over the last 200 million years, there has been 10,000 feet of manure and 1000 feet of dead carcasses spread out over this field. On average, over a long time span, the fertility remains about the same. In fact, on a long-term average, the nutrients never leave the soil. Now, a herd of deer might come by one day, eat a lot of foliage and move on and deposit their manure some place else. However, on average, other animals will leave manure in this same area, and other animals will die and their bodies will disintegrate and re-enrich the soil.

Ok, now you take it over. You cut the hay, bail it and put it on a truck. The nutrients are hauled off to who knows where. You cut, bail and haul. Eventually, you will need to return nutrients to your soil so that the grass, oats or alfalfa will grow well.

One way to return the nutrients is to not farm it for a long time. Birds will fly over, crap on your field and then once in a while a deer will come in and leave some manure, over the years animals will die, etc. The problem with this approach is that it might take 200 years to get the nutrient levels back to where they are at their best.

So, as a farmer, you need to put nutrients back. Typically, with every ton of hay bailed and hauled away, a total of about 100 pounds of NPK and other nutrients are removed. This varies widely but 100 pounds is a good rough number.

Considering fish oil is about 7% nutrients, (2-4-1) and the price is $138 for 5 gallons. At 9 pounds per gallon, this equates to $138 for 45 pounds of 7% fertilizer. 7% of 45 pounds = 3.15 pounds of actual plant food. $138 divided by 3.15 = $43.81 per pound of nutrients. If each ton of hay needs 100 pounds, then you will need to spend $4381.00 on this fish oil per ton of hay produced.

If you get lucky and have Bill Gates for a neighbor ( a million to one odds) and he gets into horses or alpacas for a hobby (million to one odds) and he has a head injury and gets real stupid and pays you $5000 per ton of hay (million to one odds) you might do just fine by using fish oil. Otherwise, use chemicals.

A plant does not know of a molecule of nitrate came from a fish, from a deer turd or from a chemical.


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## Hokelund Farm (Feb 4, 2014)

Hugh said:


> One way I visualize how nutrients / soils work is the following, and this might help you. (Please understand, I'm not talking down to you, this is how I talk to myself, how I think about it.)
> 
> Think about how things have worked for millions of years. Animals eat plants and other animals. These animals roam around and their manure is scattered about. These animals eventually die and the minerals that make-up their bodies return to the soil. Over millions of years and billions of animals, the fertility becomes widely dispersed.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the breakdown. However, I disagree with "A plant does not know of a molecule of nitrate came from a fish, from a deer turd or from a chemical."

Well I'll back up - a plant may not know the difference, but we know the difference - it is well documented that there is a nutritional difference between chemically, organically, or naturally fertilized plants.


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## Hugh (Sep 23, 2013)

We do know the difference, and some of that difference is expressed by the economy of it all.


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

There is nothing better then natural fertilizer.There is a lot of extra goodies in it besides NP&K. BUT I am talking manure applied at 1000's of times the rate as these so called miracle,natural fertilizers sprayed at a gallon an acre.Common rates for cattle manure are 10 ton acre.Liquid cattle manure @ 4000 gpa.Liquid hog manure @ 3000 gpa.Chicken manure is around 2 ton acre.These rates would cost around $100 an acre and be all you would need for 200 bu corn.This is a much better buy then some ground up fish guts diluted in sprayer and sprayed over a field.

So my advise for the original poster is to spread the manure he has over more acres,spreading it thinner if you think you need the other goodies in natural fertilizer and supplement it with commercial fertilizer to balance the needs of your crop.

save the $ you were going to spend on the foo foo juice and build up your soil with the commercial fertilizer,instead of draining the nutrients out of the soil which will happen useing these miracle grows.


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## Hokelund Farm (Feb 4, 2014)

Manure will definitely be the #1 choice. Just wanted to see if anyone has tried the hydrolized fish - as there are plenty of people out there who swear by it. Our cattle manure should cover about 10-15 acres. I'll have to find some more to cover the rest, but I don't plan on using commercial fertilizer.


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## Ray 54 (Aug 2, 2014)

Hokelund Farm I live in the Land of Fruits and Nuts ( California ) and nothing drives the nut cases madder than they cannot get a scientific study to say there is more nutrition in organic food. I have no problem with what ever practices you wish to us.As long as the P and K are from "rock " that are mined from mother nature I don't see it not being organic.Now if it is by products from other industrial products I can see all kinds of problems no one thought about. Nitrogen is the tricky one in that there are many benefits from compost that is not in pure N from ammonia that is taken from the air but to my thinking is not adding impurities from other sources .


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## Hugh (Sep 23, 2013)

Ray 54: "...nothing drives the nut cases madder than they cannot get a scientific study to say there is more nutrition in organic food...."

Ray they can't generate a scientific study that shows more nutrition in organic food because there are no measurements that show it to be so. For example, vitamin C is a molecule that consists of six atoms of carbon, eight atoms of hydrogen and six atoms of oxygen. To an environmentalist, "natural" vitamin C is somehow different that man-made or "artificial" vitamin C. However, there are no measurements or experiments that will show any difference.

The difference is in their head, not in the molecule itself.

This form of thinking is known as subjectivism, which is also the mental architecture of voodoo, witchcraft, black magic and the Dark Ages; the situation mankind came out of about 800 years ago.

The whole foundation for this type of subjectivist thinking is the false belief that Man is not natural to Earth. For example, if beavers build a dam, this is "natural" and good. If some people build a dam, this is "artificial" and bad.

There is zero evidence that Man or any action he may take is unnatural.

Humans share about 60% of their DNA with plants, about 90% with other mammals, and 98% with other primates. If anyone believes humans and their actions are unnatural to this planet, then the burden is on them to look into human DNA and find the exact part of that DNA that makes humans unnatural.

If every action taken by a plant or animal is natural, then every action Man takes is natural. A bag of potassium sulfate fertilizer from a fertilizer plant is 100% natural in that a 100% natural species from the planet Earth made it. It is as natural as ricin produced by a castor bean plant, or the chemical herbicide, medicarpin produced by an alfalfa plant. If anyone has any objective evidence to the contrary, please let me know by giving the evidence.


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## Hokelund Farm (Feb 4, 2014)

This thread wasn't started to debate the natural/biological/chemical/mechanical approach to farming. There are endless scientific studies showing the nutritional superiority of biologically grown food vs chemically grown food. Send a biologically grown vegetable and a chemically grown vegetable in to a lab. The results are obvious.

The indifference that you see is in YOUR head.

I would suggest reading or listening to anything by Arden Anderson or many other highly credible sources. Anderson is a practicing physician, licensed nutritionist, and an agricultural consultant.

If you don't agree that's fine, I just ask you show a little respect for someone trying to improve the health of the land and the people who inhabit it.


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## Hugh (Sep 23, 2013)

I think one problem is many people have the notion that "chemicals" are something that only people manufacture. The fact is that plants and animals manufacture far more chemicals than humans. Conifers like pine trees, spruce trees, etc exceed the mass of humans by many hundred fold, and they make millions of tons of chemicals in their sap that are highly toxic to many humans and other plants. Many species of plants manufacture chemicals that are deadly to other plants. This is known as alleopathy. The 100% natural neurotoxic chemicals in snake venom are an example of chemicals produced by animals. Chemicals are naturally occurring, regardless if made my humans or other life forms. If your brain chemistry gives you contrary ideas, the chemicals are yours and you have that prerogative. Humans are natural to Earth. I'll make this my last comment on your thread, you can have the last shot.


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## Hokelund Farm (Feb 4, 2014)

Yes, many chemicals are naturally occurring, and aren't inherently good or bad. I may be off on this but I would argue that "producing" and "manufacturing" are different. My thinking being that plants, animals, and humans that "produce" chemicals strictly from their existence is much different than humans "manufacturing" chemicals. For example - Snakes produce venom just by existing. Humans manufacture things like roundup, cyanide, and so on. I

Anyway, the fact that people aren't the only beings that produce chemicals was never the topic at hand.

The issue was dismissing obvious differences between the nutrient content of growing food in different ways and getting labeled a "quack" or "it's all in their head" for believing the overwhelming evidence.

Thanks for the last shot - we can start a new thread if we want to discuss further.


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## TJH (Mar 23, 2014)

Save your money! I've tried every kind of snake oil out there, looking for the silver bullet. The late Dr. William Albrecht was right when he said feed the soil and let the soil feed the plant. This stuff may give you a boost but I do believe that you must have fertility in your ground first. Have a good soil test first with major and micro nutrients and get a road map to follow. If you have access to poultry litter go with that first. If not look for ammonium sulfate, MAP instead of DAP, and potassium sulfate instead of potassium chloride. Then add zinc, sulfer, boron,etc. Hokelund Farm there is a place in your neck of the woods called Mid-west Bio-AG run by a fellow named Gary Zimmerman and he has a book called the Biological Farmer which is a good read, and I'm in no way pushing the book, just believe if you want to know something about something read everything you can get your hands on about it. Just my humble thoughts, and which ever you chose, to do it right be prepared to open your wallet, especially for the "organic" imputs.


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## Hokelund Farm (Feb 4, 2014)

Thanks, I have been on the Mid-west Bio-AG website. I am just starting the soil study course by Dr. Arden Anderson and he has mentioned Mid-west Bio ag a couple of times.

I realize and by no means am I under the impression that there is a silver bullet solution. Just trying to "weed" out the crap, and wasn't sure what people thought of hydrolyzed fish, because I got the feeling that they marketed their product as feeding the soil and in turn the soil feeding the plant.

Closest poultry farms are about 40 minutes away so that might not be an option. There are a couple big and a few small dairies around that I might have to check with.


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