Slurry Spreaders/Farming Simulator 15
A Slurry Spreader (not to be confused with a Fertilizer Spreader) is a piece of equipment that can cover a field with Slurry. This doubles the field's Crop yield. Slurry Spreaders are large, heavy, and inefficient, but the fertilizer they use is practically free. With the use of Hired Workers, they are the absolute best fertilization equipment in the game.
There are three Slurry Spreaders available in the base game. They differ from one another primarily in capacity and working width.
List of Slurry Spreaders
| Spreader | Price ($) |
Maintenance ($ / day) |
Capacity (liters) |
Working Width (m) |
Suggested Tractor Power (kW / hp) |
Max. Working Speed (km/h) |
Front Hitch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
9,700 | 15 | 8,000 | 11.0 | 51 / 70 | 20 | Drawbar (Ball) |
 |
38,000 | 40 | 18,500 | 15.0 | 110 / 150 | 20 | Drawbar (Ball) * |
 |
62,000 | 80 | 25,000 | 15.0 | 132 / 180 | 20 | Fifth Wheel |
Notes for Table
- The Power Requirements are suggestions only. Read the individual articles to learn the actual recommended tractors for each Spreader.
- The Zunhammer SKE 18.5 PU has a second hitch at the rear, which is uniquely tailored for the Zunhammer Zunidisc.
Overview
Slurry Spreaders are machines that can be filled up with Slurry, and then taken to a field where they will distribute it onto the soil. The fertilizer material itself is a mix of cow feces and urine, which is allowed to ferment until it becomes highly nutritious for plants. Any patch of field covered with this material will yield double the normal amount of fruit, when harvested.
There are three Slurry Spreaders available in the base game, and they are all functionally similar. Each is comprised of a large chemical tank which can be filled with Slurry. A nozzle at the rear of the machine can then eject the Slurry out onto the field. The entire device is mounted on wheels, with an attachment point that can be hooked to a towing vehicle.
Slurry Spreaders must be filled with Slurry in order to work. This type of fertilizer is available as a byproduct of Cow husbandry - Cows will automatically produce it as long as they are fed on any substance. Slurry is also created whenever Silage is sold at the Biogas Plant. In both cases, Slurry accumulates into a special tank (either at the pasture or the biogas plant, respectively), from which it can be automatically loaded into the Slurry Spreaders.
Once dragged out to a field and activated, the Slurry Spreader will continuously expend its supply of Slurry. Any ground within the working area of the Slurry Spreader will become fertilized instantly. Slurry Spreaders do not care whether the ground they are working has already been fertilized - they will continue expending Manure until they are turned off.
Slurry Spreaders expend Manure very rapidly, and will often run out of material when working larger fields. Roughly 16,000 to 20,000 liters of Slurry are required to fertilize only 1 hectare of field, depending on the machine used for the job. Once empty, the Spreader needs to be taken back to the Cow Pasture or Biogas Plant for a refill. However, the game also provides equipment for storing Slurry close to the fields, making these trips shorter and much more efficient. The Slurry itself is essentially free, and tends to accumulate in large quantities (particularly as a byproduct of Silage sales).
Furthermore, due to what might be either a programming oversight or a deliberate design feature, Slurry is exceptionally cheap even when Hired Workers purchase it themselves - costing only a tiny fraction of the profit if brings. Therefore, when Hired Workers are used, Slurry becomes the single most cost-efficient type of fertilizer in the game.
Creating Slurry
- Main article: Slurry (Farming Simulator 15)
Before any Slurry Spreader can be used, you first need to secure a large amount of Slurry. Unlike some other fertilizers, Slurry is not infinitely available - you must produce it yourself.
There are two ways to produce Slurry in the game. The method is through Cow husbandry - feeding cows will generate a modest amount of this substance. The other method is far more efficient, and far more profitable: Creating and selling Silage.
In the first method, Slurry is created as a byproduct of Cows. As long as cows are fed on any substance (Grass, Silage, or Total Mixed Ration), each Cow produces 236 liters of Slurry per day. This may sound like a lot, but in actuality even 100 cows will take quite some time to produce enough Slurry to fertilizer larger fields, such as those on Westbridge Hills. If the Cows run out of all types of food in their trough, no Slurry will be produced.
In the second method, Slurry is created as a byproduct of the operation of the Biogas Plant. When Silage is sold at the Fliegl receptacles at the plant, it is slowly processed at a rate of about 26 liters per second. Simultaneously, each liter of Silage processed this way will also generate about 0.33 liters of Slurry.
In both cases, Slurry accumulates into a tank next to the appropriate facility. At the Biogas Plant, this is a large black tank standing apart from the Silage tanks. At the Cow Pasture, the appearance of the tank differs between maps: On Westbridge Hills it looks identical to the black tank at the Biogas Plant; on Bjornholm, it is an underground tank with a red pump next to it. In all cases, you can see Slurry visibly accumulate inside the tank. You may drive any vehicle next to the tank to see how much Slurry is currently there. Slurry tanks can hold up to 1,000,000 liters of Slurry at any given time, and Slurry production will automatically stop if there is no room left.
Towing the Spreader
Different Slurry Spreaders have different attachment points on them, and so can be towed by different sets of vehicles.
The two "smaller" Slurry Spreader, the Marshall ST 1800 and the Zunhammer SKE 18.5 PU have a Drawbar (Bolt) attachment, which can be attached to any tractor in the game. They can also be attached to the Lizard PiQup. Furthermore, you can attach these Spreaders to most of the Harvesters.
The largest Slurry Spreader, the Fliegl STF 25000 VC, is designed to be attached directly to a Truck, using a Fifth Wheel hitch. However, you can also attach it to Tractors with the use of a Dolly as an adapter.
Despite the fact that all these vehicles can be used for towing, only certain vehicles will actually be able to operate the device properly. Even towing itself can be difficult if the vehicle is too weak, when towing uphill, or if the Spreader is full of Slurry at the time.
This is especially true once the device is turned on. Any towing vehicle can turn on the Slurry Spreader (except the Lizard PiQup, which does not get the option at all), but once the device is activated it actually weakens the towing vehicle by quite a bit. The larger Slurry Spreaders may only work properly with very large tractors. Read the individual articles for each Slurry Spreader to learn what vehicles are suitable to tow and operate it.
Loading Slurry
Once a Slurry Spreader has been attached to a towing vehicle, it needs to be filled with Slurry before it can start working.
Slurry Spreaders can be filled at any Slurry tank, whether stationary or mobile. The stationary tanks are located at the Biogas Plant and the Cow Pasture, as described in the previous section. The only mobile tank in the game is the Kotte FRC.
Filling a Spreader with Slurry is very simple: Just drive the Spreader up next to the tank, and hit the refill button. Filling will stop automatically if the Spreader is full, if the tank is empty, or if you drive away from the tank. You may also stop filling manually, by hitting the button again.
Note that Hired Workers do not require the Spreader to contain any Slurry in order to work. They will purchase Slurry themselves as they go, for a surprisingly cheap price that beats all other fertilizer types in the game. More on this below.
Fertilizing the Field
As long as the Slurry Spreader's tank contains at least 1 liter of Slurry, and is attached to a towing vehicle, it can be activated.
As soon as the Spreader is activated, it will immediately begin dispensing Slurry within its working area. Different Slurry Spreaders expend their Slurry at different rates, but that rate is often very high (anywhere from 100 to 200 liters per second, with the machines available in the base game). The Slurry Spreader does not care whether it is currently on a field, nor whether that field is already fertilized - it will continue expending its fertilizer until turned off.
The working area of a Slurry Spreader is in the shape of a box, immediately behind it. The width of the box is equal to the Spreader's working width, and can range from 11.0 to 15.0 meters with the machines available in the base game. The length of the box is a few meters, assuming the device is not moving. Any piece of field within that area will instantly become fertilized. A piece of field that was already fertilized does not gain any additional benefit from being fertilized again, but the Slurry Spreader does not care - it will expend fertilizer anyway.
Fertilization can be performed at any time, but will only affect the next crop that becomes ripe on the fertilized field. That crop will give double yields, and the soil underneath it will become immediately unfertilized. Therefore, you may postpone your fertilization until just before the field becomes ripe, and still get the same results as if you had fertilized the field before it was even sowed. However, if you fertilize a field when it already contains ripened crops, those crops will not give a double yield - but the next harvest will. Until a crop becomes ripe on top of it, fertilized soil will not become unfertilized no matter what you do to it.
Hired Workers
You may use Hired Workers to operate a Slurry Spreader.
Slurry Spreaders are fairly reliable in terms of coverage; Hired Workers should have no problem covering the entire field with few or no missed patches. You do not require much maneuvering space at the end of the field, especially if using a smaller Spreader and Tractor.
Note that Hired Workers can continue working when they run out of Slurry in the tank. Once the tank is empty, the Hired Worker will automatically purchase more Slurry as necessary.
This is the point where Slurry Spreaders can become superior to all other types of fertilization equipment: the price at which Hired Workers procure additional Slurry is incredibly small - around $240-300 per hectare. This price is ridiculously low compared to the profit a hectare of crops can bring, and is even lower than the price of Solid Fertilizer and Liquid Fertilizer when they are purchased manually.
As a result, when using Hired Workers you do not need to generate your own fertilizer, and only need to pay a tiny amount of money compared to the profit you'll get. Furthermore, you don't have to refill the Slurry Spreader at all while it's working, so a Spreader can cover an entire field of any size in one go. This saves a lot of work!
If you do not mind exploiting this feature, Slurry is by far the most cost-effective way to fertilizer your fields.
Refilling
The smallest Slurry Spreader in the game is capable of covering only the smallest of fields in one go. The largest Slurry Spreader can work the smaller fields In the Bjornholm map without stopping for a refill, but even this Spreader cannot work medium-sized fields in one go. On Westbridge Hills, most fields are too large for even the largest Slurry Spreader.
Once the tank is empty (assuming you are not using a Hired Worker, as explained above), you will need to get the Slurry Spreader to one of the stationary Slurry tanks on the map - either at the Cow Pasture or the Biogas Plant, which might be far away from the field you are fertilizing.
However, the game provides a different way of doing this: with the use of a Slurry Field Tank. This device can be placed right next to the field, and serve as a filling point that works just the same as the stationary tanks - except it can be moved from field to field at will. A separate Slurry Tanker is then required to ferry Slurry from the stationary tanks to this field tank, but can do so in large quantities with each trip. The two pieces of equipment available for this task in the base game are the Kotte FRC field tank, and the Kotte TSA 30000 transport tanker, respectively.