Calculating the Value of Nutrients in Manure
Consider fertilizer cost, manure’s nutrient content and availability, and crop’s nutrient need to establish value of manure.
June 4, 2025
Commercial fertilizer can be an expensive input cost, and utilizing manure may provide and alternative. University of Nebraska Extension specialists offer tips for establishing the fertilizer value of manure for your operation’s use. [Photo by Albert Brunsting.]
by Leslie Johnson, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
“How much is this manure worth?” This is a common question from both livestock farmers who are supplying manure and crop farmers who are utilizing it. To answer this question, it is important to understand the difference between “gross value” and “net value.”
The gross value of manure reflects the equivalent commercial fertilizer value of the nutrients contained in the manure. The net value considers the effects of application method, transportation and cropping system nutrient needs, as well as intrinsic values that are much more difficult to put a number on.
This article will focus on determining the gross value of nutrients in manure. The article will walk you through the steps to calculate your manure value, but note that the University of Nebraska has an Excel-based spreadsheet tool that also works.
The value of manure depends upon:
- the manure type;
- how and where the manure is applied;
- the amount of nutrients that the field needs for the next crop or crops; and
- the cost of fertilizer.
Determining commercial fertilizer costs in $ per pound of nutrient
The first thing we need is the cost of fertilizer, which will have to be obtained from your local fertilizer dealer as prices vary between dealers. Once the price is known, you will need to know the percent of nutrient in the fertilizer product. Some common fertilizers are listed in Table 1. With this information, we can get a price per pound of nutrient. The equation to do that is:
Table 1: Common commercial fertilizers and primary nutrient composition
If urea is $500 per ton, then the price you’re paying for nitrogen when buying urea is:
This worksheet is a guide to the math for calculating price per pound of nutrient. This process would need to be repeated for each nutrient.
Manure nutrient availability
The next step in determining a manure value is to determine how much of our manure nitrogen is available. A number of factors influence this, including the temperature at the time of application, whether the product was incorporated, and the type of animal and housing that the manure came from. For this reason, different places have different availability factors.
Here in Nebraska, UNL research shows that for most species about 40% of the organic nitrogen in manure is available the first year with an additional 35% becoming available over the following three years (see Table 3).
Table 2: Example beef manure nutrient analysis
Table 3: Fraction of organic nitrogen available this year
For this example, I’m using a sample of beef manure with about 13 pounds (lb.) of organic nitrogen, which calculates to about 5 lb. per ton the first year and another 4½ in the next few years.
Ammonium nitrogen is only available the first year and is more easily lost to the atmosphere, which affects its availability (see Table 4). Since beef manure is not usually incorporated, we’re going to assume that the manure is being broadcasted without incorporation and we’ve lost all of our ammonium nitrogen to volatilization (into the air).
Table 4: Fraction of ammonium nitrogen available this year
So, using 54¢ per pound of N and manure with 9.5 lb. of nitrogen available per ton, our manure is worth about $5 per ton for the nitrogen alone.
However, we know that manure contains many nutrients besides nitrogen, so we need to repeat this process for all nutrients and add them together. Without going through all the math for each nutrient (and assuming the fertilizer prices listed in Table 5), the sample of manure listed above is worth about $22.91 per ton — accounting for nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), sulfur (S) and zinc (Zn).
Remember, we typically don’t apply just 1 ton per acre, so that makes manure a valuable part of our livestock and cropping operations.
This worksheet is a guide to the math for calculating nutrient availability and the price of those nutrients per ton.
The last and most important factor in valuing manure is whether the crop you are growing needs the nutrients that will be applied with the manure.
Table 5: Example fertilizer prices
Nutrient needs
The last and most important factor in valuing manure is whether the crop you are growing needs the nutrients that will be applied with the manure. If the crop doesn’t need nutrients or the soil has sufficient nutrients for the crop, those nutrients are not as valuable. So, looking at the soil test and knowing what crop will be grown following the manure application will make a big difference in the value of the manure.
Editor’s note: Leslie Johnson is an animal manure management extension educator at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. This article was reviewed by Javed Iqbal and Amy Schmidt.
Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA, Vol. 17, No. 6-A
Topics: Management
Publication: Angus Beef Bulletin
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