Mobile barn strip system results in top yield

PONTIAC, Ill. — An agricultural production system that integrates crops and livestock into a single interconnected practice in one field was the top yielder in Precision Technology Institute’s trials last year.

The field was interlaced in four-row, 10-foot increments alternating between corn and cover crops for livestock grazing and averaged 403.7 bushels per acre.

The system provides fertilizer for next year’s crop and income from marketing both the row crop and livestock, while increasing plant and animal biological diversity in the field.

“We’re planting corn east to west to get more sunlight. Right next to it on each side, we’re going to plant a short crop. One short crop may be soybeans, and one short crop may be a cover crop,” said Jason Webster, Precision Planting lead agronomist and PTI director, during a recent field day.

“You harvest corn and soybeans and then you plant a cover crop, but that doesn’t work for us here. I don’t have a very big window to get that cover crop growing after harvest, getting the root size and do all of the good things that a cover crop can do.

“So, we’re taking a whole different approach to cover crops and I’m planting them in May and June. This corn is up and I plant a cover crop next to it.”

That’s where the livestock come into the mix.

Webster integrated a Stock Cropper, an autonomous livestock confinement system with chickens in the back, hogs in the middle and sheep up front.

The multispecies mobile livestock barn houses, feeds, waters and moves though the field.

“The sheep will mow the cover crop down and are giving me manure while they’re doing that. The hogs are in the middle to give me a second manure. They’ll be on slats to keep them from tilling the ground with their snout. The chickens in the back will scavenge everything and they will give me chicken litter,” Webster said.

“This is designed with GPS to move 8 inches every hour. I don’t have to be out here to do it. It will automatically happen.”

The rotational farming system employs all five tenants of regenerative agriculture — minimizes soil disturbance, maintains living roots, keeps the soil covered, has animal integration and utilizes diverse crops.

At the end of the year, when the crops and livestock are harvested, the alternative strips are flipped. Where the corn was, it’s rotated to pasture and where the pasture was it’s rotated to corn — plants feeding animals, animals feeding plants and all feeding the soil.

Additional Income

“We’ll market the chickens every eight weeks. Those are organic chickens. We don’t sell them. We donate them to our local food pantry, but in looking at the economics, it would be $30 apiece. We’ll also market the sheep and the hogs for bacon and pork chops,” Webster noted of the additional income realized from the noncash crop — cover crops — for grazing.

“The fertility is just driving higher and higher into the system. Where the animals are at, that’s where my corn is going to be next year. We’ll come in and do strip-till and I won’t need to have any fertilizer in the tanks because the animals are giving me that.

“So, we’re saving dollars and they go back into the piggy bank to look at the economics of the overall system. The 403.7 bushels per acre year we had last year was right here, right next to the cover crop where the animals are. I hope that number will continue to increase.”