nitrogen deficiency

Nitrogen

Nitrogen deficiency

Nitrogen is the most important nutrient for the vegetative growth, and then also the most important nutrient for the amount of crop you get from your greenland. A Nitrogen deficiency leads to lightgreen, yellow or reddisch to purple colour of the leaves. They get narrow and the fruits very small. Nitrogen absolutely most important function is being raw material for amino acids and thereby protein. And a high protein level in the forage is very important because proteins are needed by the animals to build muscles.
If you have a deficiency on Nitrogen, you won’t get enough crops or hey/ silage. There will be low protein levels and the animals will produce less meat and milk.
Against the deficiency you can use chemical fertilizers, if you aren’t an organic farmer, or spread manure not only from cows but from poultry.

Nitrogen surplus

Too much nitrogen leads to damage of the strength in the straw, witch increase the danger of the crops to lie down. If you grow potatoes or grain you have to be careful with the nitrogen, because to much nitrogen means smaller crops in this case. To much nitrogen in potatoes or cabbage crops will destroy the capability to be stored over time. You’ll get watery potatoes and smaller tubers. Nitrogen has a negative increase on the generative growth. You see a full supply of Nitrogen in darkgreen leaves.

If cow gets too much nitrogen with silage, there's a risk of sterility and nitrate poisoning.

Nitrogen losses

There are different opinions you could choose against losses of Nitrogen in farm yard manure: have an underground tank or cover your stores, use additives, aerate carefully, turn and move the manure carefully, dilute the slurry (because if you do this the slurry will get into the soil better), incorporate the manure after spreading, pay attention to the weather conditions ore use band spreaders. Austrian farmers only cover there stores and some farmers care about the weather, that is not to hot and cloudy. But they all think that they have no problems with Nitrogen loss.

Page updated 10.4.2006