This picture (above) was sent in to the Irish Farmers Journal by a reader – yet another broken slurry lid inside a cattle pen. The reader emailed to say that he was checking the cattle the previous evening and saw the lid. Thankfully, no cattle had fallen in. He took the stock out of the pen and will now go about getting a new lid fixed – hopefully a stronger one.

“The slats are only six years old,” the reader commented.

Really he should consider moving the agitation/filling point outside of the shed completely. Internal agitation points are a risk to farmers’ lives for two different reasons.

First, there are widespread cases of lids collapsing and cattle falling into the underground tank. In then attempting to rescue the animals, all too often last thing at night, after a final check of the shed, the farmer and his family are at risk of drowning. A farmer is lucky if only cattle are lost.

The second risk is when the farmer or his contractor is agitating the tank or emptying it. Because of the walls and roof, the gases released from under the crust are slow to disperse – leaving the driver at great risk of being poisoned.

When the agitation point is outdoors, there’s enough open space or breeze to allow the gases to disperse. County councils are starting to pay attention to this issue. One Co Cork farmer recently got a query back from his county council on his planning application because he proposed to roof over existing external agitation points.

The planner’s request for an engineer’s certificate was essentially a block on permission. The farmer instead revised his plans, got his permission and the agitation points remain outside the shed – and safe.