Summary
Different types of fertiliser can be added to blocks by month. Overseer defines a set of products and their nutrients for the major NZ fertiliser companies. If there is not an appropriate product to select from, custom fertiliser and hence nutrient compositions can be created.
Impact
All fertiliser applications are rolled up into total nutrients applied by block and month. The model uses these added nutrient to model soil nitrogen pools, plant uptake and nutrient concentrations in pasture.
Details
Fertiliser is a key source of nutrients on the farm. All fertiliser applications are essentially rolled into monthly amounts and applied to blocks. Gain from adding fertiliser is realised in plant production and so is essentially captured in yield or animal production, therefore, adjusting fertiliser in the model does not change pasture production as the animals and food from crops/supplements remains the same.
Overseer defines a set of products and their nutrients or custom fertilisers can be created and used.
Fertiliser applications in OverseerFM can be applied to multiple blocks at once. To enable flexibility, they can be split into individual applications (if wish to change the application of one of the blocks) or grouped back together (based on “like” applications).