# Milk as fertilizer: Threatened?



## Heritagefarm (Feb 21, 2010)

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2010/06/epa_classifies_milk_as_oil_for.html


> But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is classifying milk as oil because it contains a percentage of animal fat, which is a non-petroleum oil.


Well, let me start off by saying, milk is one of the best things you can do to your field. It is not much of a source for macronutrients, but it is excellent for what it does. Sugar is commonly used to feed soil microbes; I'm sure milk sugar does the same. It also provides many vitamins and minerals. So, milk is essentially microbe food, and can drastically improve plant health. Some recent research has been done on raw milk fertilizer, and is finding it to work quite well, especially on refractometer readings. What are your thoughts on this new EPA brainfart, and when do you suppose they will repeal it?


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## springvalley (Jun 23, 2009)

I did some of this on a hay field this spring, and I do think it worked well. No university trials or anything but I was going to plow up the hay, and after I put the milk on it, it took off and looked darn good, so I left it. Second cutting got 30, 800 lb. bales off 9 acres, not bad in my book, feeding them to the cows now. They just love them, been thinking of starting an organic lawn fertilizer business, but you would have every cat in town licking at your lawn. > Thanks Marc


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## Ronney (Nov 26, 2004)

I can't get on to the link you posted - still on dial up here and it's going to take a month of Sundays to load - but interesting to me that you should post this at this point in time.

I have about 1,000 litres of milk sitting in drums that is anything up to 6 months old. No good for anything so I have to get rid of it but how? I'll throw it on the back paddocks. So I did. When I took the cows to their grazing after milking I loaded 40 litres of milk on to the Mule and threw it around. When I went to get them for night milking I repeated the excercise. They went back there the following day and I did the same. By that evening the stuff I'd thrown out the day before had killed the grass. 6 weeks later the area I'd thrown the rotten milk onto was a lush dark green and a good 6" taller than the surrounding grass. When I went to collect the cows that evening they had eaten it to the boards. Not hard to work out what I'm doing with my last years rotten milk. Now I want to think through a system that will strain out what solids are left in the milk so that I can put it through a sprayer.

I'm no scientist and have no idea what is in milk that makes it such a good fert - this is something I usually feed to animals rather than the land:grin:. I also have no idea on how long acting this method of fert will be but as long as I have excess milk, I will continue to use it.

Heritage, this pedantic, nit picking attitude of Govt's, is a worry and believe me is not confined to the States. I think that Amercans are much better at standing up on their hind legs and saying "We don't accept this" than NZ'ers are so please continue to do it. You lot have people power and although too many people can be a pain in the grits, it can also work for you.

Cheers,
Ronniue


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## springvalley (Jun 23, 2009)

Hey Ronnie, glad to see you back up. Calcium is what is good for the soil, after all these years, it has been depleated from the soil. Calcium is what makes sugar in the plants, crops and weeds. That is why you may have more weeds of a certain type because they don`t like calcium, so thats why they do well. And crops need calcium for sugar to make the grain and given calcium helps make the crop. Also up the microbial action in the soil, which is also depleated from years of spray and ammonia use. I have to run , chore time, but this sure is a good thread to start the day. > Thnaks Marc


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