Properties of Hog Manure in Saskatchewan

The Agricultural Operations Regulations allow producers to use accepted standard values for manure management planning. The values for hog manure were last published in 1996; the ones presented below represent current values.

These values are intended to assist producers who do not have site-specific manure values. For example, a producer wishing to establish a new barn may not have site-specific records. In this case, book-values are useful to initiate a manure management plan. For an established producer, manure management should be based upon site-specific data.

Book-values

The data in Table 1 was submitted by hog operations in Saskatchewan for annual volume of manure removal, nutrient content, type of barn and number of head. The barn types included farrow-to-finish, farrow, finish and nursery. The data for manure volume was collected between 2006 and 2012. For nutrients, the data was collected between 2002 and 2009. Nutrient data included nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium.

Table 1 – Properties of Hog Manure in Saskatchewan

¹ – For farrow barns and farrow-to-finish barns, the unit is L/sow/d. Only the sows are counted but the volume of manure includes all animals in the barn.
² – Unit of g/10 L is the same as lb/1,000 gallons
³ – Data in parentheses is number of barns
⁴ – Data in parentheses is number of samples.
⁵ – Phosphorus is reported as elemental P. P₂O₅ = 2.3 x P.

The concentration is presented in g/10 L. Metric tends to be inconvenient for manure because manure is land applied in imperial units. The unit of g/10 L is the same as lb/1,000 gallons. No conversion is required.

Average values are presented in Table 1. There is tremendous variance in the data over the years and between different barns. The volume of manure is impacted by water quality, water usage, frequency of washing, leakage, type of waterers and type of feeders. The amount of nutrients in the manure is impacted by the type of diet and type of manure storage system.

All values are "as-removed.". The manure volume was determined from the amount of manure removed from the earthen manure storage. Nutrients were measured at the time of application and therefore represent manure after storage losses but prior to application losses.