By Jack Bosworth, Director, FJ Bosworth & Sons. Published 14 April 2022.
I hope everyone is well.
It has been a busy week on the farm getting our pig slurry applied to some of our wheats. It is not the most exciting job on the farm, but I have genuinely enjoyed our first spring season of spreading our own and getting out to do some contract applications for others.
I am pleased with how we have got on. Just two more jobs to go, totalling around 4,500 m³.
The bit I did not expect to enjoy this much
The most satisfying part has not just been seeing the impact slurry and digestate have on a growing crop. It has been watching how cleanly the crop recovers from the application itself. The fields I worked on a week ago have already bounced back from the wheelings so well that you would have to be looking hard to spot where I had travelled.
The main reasons for a quick recovery, in my experience, come down to:
- Application timing.
- Growth stage at application.
- Ground conditions.
- Low tyre pressures.
- Good tyre tread.
- Air temperature.
- Operator attention to detail.
None of those are negotiable if you want the crop to look the way ours does a week on.
Why we bought the kit, and the one thing that bothered me
We always used a contractor up until the purchase of our own application equipment. The only real reservation I had about bringing it in-house was the difference in working width.
Our contractor used to apply with a 24 metre dribble bar, which meant every run sat in a tramline. We have a 12 metre dribble bar, so on our own ground we are travelling in the crop every other row.
I could not justify the additional cost of going to 24 metres. The 12 was what we went for, and the results have so far justified the call.
What changed once we owned the operation
The real difference is not in the application itself. It is in how we now think about using slurry across the whole farm.
When you are paying a contractor by the hour, you are weighing everything up against speed. You pick the big fields, you apply at higher rates, and you stay as close to the farm as possible. You are also trying to make the most of the product, and with fertiliser prices where they are now, that has become more important than ever.
Once you own the kit, those constraints largely fall away.
This year we have applied slurry over double the ground we would have covered with a contractor, leaving only about 15 hectares of winter wheat at Spains Hall that has not had slurry this season.
Times remain incredibly tough for all pig farmers, but one silver lining is that we will not be needing to buy as much bagged fertiliser as we would without our pigs on the farm.
A frank word on what slurry is actually worth
With that in mind, I would urge anyone who is currently giving or selling slurry away to nearby farmers, or doing straw-for-muck arrangements, to look very seriously at how good a deal they are really getting.
Yes, there is a higher application cost for slurry than for bagged fertiliser. That should not be the reason you give it away.
My current value for our pig slurry at 3 per cent DM is around £10/m³, based on the plant-available NPK nutrient values. The cost of getting a contractor to apply the slurry should, in my view, be somewhere between £1.50 and £2.50/m³, depending on the number and size of fields, the application rate, and the distance from the lagoon or tank.
That maths is worth doing properly before you agree to anything.
Editor’s note (May 2026)
Since this article was written, our agricultural contracting offer has grown substantially. We now apply slurry and digestate at 12, 18, 20 and 24 metre working widths using umbilical systems, alongside tanker application using a 4,100 gallon Storth Tandem Axle Tanker with a Storth 12m ContractorPlus Trailing Shoe. All applications use RTK guidance for precision.
If you would like an estimate for slurry or digestate application this season, visit the Contracting > Application pages on this site, or contact us via WhatsApp, phone or email.
About the author
Jack Bosworth is a fourth-generation farmer and Director of FJ Bosworth & Sons, an arable and pig farming business at Spains Hall, Willingale, Essex. The farm has been in the family since 1919, and Jack farms alongside his father Stuart Bosworth, who was named Farmers Weekly Pig Farmer of the Year in 2011. The business is Red Tractor assured and runs an integrated farm-to-fork model, with home-grown cereals milled on site using solar-generated electricity.
You can follow Jack’s articles on fjbosworth.com, or get in touch via the WhatsApp link on the site.
Fourth-generation farmer at Spains Hall, Willingale. Runs the contracting team and writes most of what appears here.