Schlangens revisit manure management to protect lake

By TIM KING The Land Correspondent

ALBANY, Minn. — When Steve and Cheryl Schlangen decided to build a solid manure storage stacking slab, they saw it as a benefit to both their farm and the Backes Lake subwatershed their farm is in.

The Schlangens milk 60 cows and raise 200 acres of crops near Albany, “We used to haul manure in the summer and find a place to stack it,” Steve said. “There’s a lot of bedding in dry manure; but there’s also a fair amount of liquid in it and we wanted to catch some of that run-off. Besides, you can’t get anything to grow for several years in the field area that you stack manure.”

So, with the technical and financial assistance of Stearns County Soil and Water Conservation District, Steve and Cheryl designed and built a concrete manure stacking slab. The slab has three walls to hold the high-nutrient liquid the Schlangens wanted to capture.

Now the manure and bedding from young stock and dry cow housing can be carefully stored during the summer and strategically spread in the fall. That approach leads to a more efficient use of nutrients; and that, in turn, can help protect the watershed’s waters.

“Farmers that use the storage capacity of their stacking slabs to time the manure applications to crop land when conditions are right cannot only get a bigger bang from their manure but prevent run off into surface waters,” Mark Lefebvre, Conservation Planning Team Manager for Stearns County SWCD, says.

“The stacking slab allows them to store manure and use it to apply the nutrients at the right source, rate, time and place,” according to the SWCD. To manage liquid manure from the dairy barn the Schlangens use low-disturbance manure injection to ensure the manure’s nutrients are incorporated in the soil to reduce runoff risks.

To inject that liquid manure, Steve experimented with power take-off shaft speeds ranging from 1,000 down to 540 rpm to see if he could apply manure at variable rates in his fields.

“I finally tried a hydraulic motor that helps me control the application rate,” he said.

Schlangens work hard to use the nutrients they put on their field efficiently so as to get the best yields with the least run-off. That’s why they chose to go with a grid soil sampling program rather than the less expensive zone sampling.

“With zone soil sampling they take a lot of tests and aggregate them to get a composite across the entire field,” Steve said. “With grid sampling you get a better picture of what you need, how much you need, and where you need it. Grid sampling shows you where you need nutrients and how much. The spreader for applying fertilizer has four different boxes and they apply NPK at variable rates where and how much is needed. To do that they use a digitized map created when grid samples were taken.”

Steve and Cheryl work with a certified crop advisor to make sure their soil sampling data get used efficiently. Steve says since he started using grid soil sampling six or seven years ago, his fertilizer use has decreased and his yields have gone up.

“I tried it one field at a time,” he said. “Before I did grid sampling there were some places not doing well and I wondered why. Now I can see those areas show up with the grid sampling map and we know how to correct them.”

The Schlangens have a crop rotation that generally runs three years of alfalfa, two of corn, and one year of soy beans.

“I find that soybeans mellow the soil and make a good seed bed,” Steve said. “Soy manages dry weather well and the roots seem to break up the hard pan.” When grid soil samples are pulled, Steve includes pH in as part of the analysis. That allows him to have that information digitized and used when he’s applying lime in advance of alfalfa planting.

“You might think the whole field needs lime; but if you sample, you may learn some areas don’t need any,” he said.

Alfalfa is started under a nurse crop of barley or, sometimes, triticale. Steve green chops and feeds that forage.

“The old dairy rotation used to include oats for grain, but you need a combine to harvest that,” he said. “A lot of years the oats will lodge before its ready to combine.”

In November 2021, Steve and Cheryl were chosen by the Stearns County SWCD to be the outstanding conservationists for the year. Noting the couple had been on their farm since the mid-1980s, the SWCD honored them for their efforts to keep nutrients out of the surface waters of the watershed.

“This farm also is where the Schlangens have established a long history of conservation work that most recently has included cover crops, vegetative buffer strips, grassed waterways, water-and-sediment control basins, reduced tillage, and no till,” the SWCD stated while presenting the award.

In 2022, more than three decades of conservation farming practices resulted in the Schlangens being selected as one of four farms in the nation to receive a U.S. Dairy Sustainability Award from the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy.

“This year’s winners exemplify how forward-thinking and regenerative efforts across the entire supply chain (for dairy products) have led to positive results and what it means to be an environmental solution,” said Barbara O’Brien, CEO of the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy.

Steve is also the chairman of the board of the Associated Milk Producers, Incorporated. v