Jerry Was Busy On Sunday Prepping His Fields For Planting

This afternoon my Coop spread my nitrogen. I chose to have urea applied instead of anhydrous ammonia. Ammonia requires a big tractor and tool bar with knives every 30 inches to inject the ammonia into the soil. Even with a big tractor it takes a lot more time then spreading urea. Plus, one nurse tank of ammonia only covers about 30 acres. It takes a lot of pickups and drivers to pull the full nurse tanks to the fields and empty ones back to the coop.

Nitrogen in the form of urea is much easier to handle and apply. The semi in the picture can haul about 25 ton of urea. Applying 100 pounds an acre of nitrogen requires 240 pounds of urea per acres. That means one semi can haul enough to the field for a little over 200 acres of corn. Plus the air flow applicator can spread a lot of urea very quickly. I had one 80 acre farm that is going to be half corn and half sweet corn so the whole farm needed nitrogen. It took a little over one hour to cover the whole farm!

Anhydrous ammonia used to cost a lot less than urea. However, when I booked my nitrogen in January the price per pound of nitrogen was about the same. In the picture you can see the urea being loaded into the air-flow applicator. The computers in the cab drive the machine and apply exactly the amount of urea per acre that I requested. It is just amazing how many acres can be covered with todays equipment and technology!