Page 205 - Nutrient Management Planning Guide

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Chapter 4.6

The load-area calibration is used for liquid •

manure injection systems and involves calculating the average area required to apply a single spreader load. The weight-area calibration involves •

weighing the amount of manure applied to a known area (usually plastic sheets, tarps or pans) and is used to calibrate surface application systems. Surface spreader passes should be •

approximately one effective spreader width apart to get relatively uniform coverage. Passes with injection equipment should be made immediately next to the previous.

Altering the ground speed will change the •

application rate. If spreading solid manure, target ground speed must be corrected for differences in density between the manure to be applied and manure applied during the calibration. Calibration curves can be developed •

for spreaders with multiple settings by repeating the calibration for high and low speeds at each setting and graphing the results. This allows the selection of appropriate combinations of speed(s) and setting(s) to achieve a target application rate.

summary