Here is a look into what goes into providing the cows on our farm clean soft comfortable beds to lie in. The pictures are from start to finish and show how we take solid manure sterilize and dry it, with a process similar to composting, the finished product is essentially soil we then use for bedding. On our farm we use 95% of the solid manure from the cows as bedding as an effort to recycle all we can and leave a minimal environmental footprint.
With use the cows tend to mess up their beds, we keep trying to get them to make their beds but to no avail.
The first thing we do is put down Hydrated Lime to dry out any wet spots, yes cows do occasionally wet the bed.
Next we mix the Lime in with what we call the Freestall Groomer, we use this piece of equipment 3 times a week to re groom the beds.
Here is what the beds look like after being groomed.
The next piece of equipment adds more bedding to the stalls.
This is the finished product a clean soft bed for the cows to lie in.
We use a process similar to composting to dry and sterilize the bedding prior to it's use.
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You know you are spoiling them don’t you. Once you start, they’ll always expect you to do their beds for them.
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Posted by judi @ BigGreenCombine | May 17, 2011, 7:37 AMThanks for the post!
I always like reading about farmers who take care of their animals properly.
Posted by Indestructible | May 24, 2011, 6:25 PMThere are quite a few of us out there. Sadly the anti farm groups make it seem different.
Posted by raylindairy | May 30, 2011, 7:31 AMOur non-dairy cows are very jealous!!!
Posted by Weekend Cowgirl | May 28, 2011, 7:49 AMThose beds look comfortable. Would the lime ever effect the
microbe count? This stuff looks good! I too do a similar
process but mix in an anti microbial, I may try this. COOL.
Posted by Crtmrsm | May 28, 2011, 6:31 PMWe use the Lime to mainly dry the bedding. It does adjust the ph and in turn kill some bacteria however only for a short time. We find by keeping things drier the bacteria does not have as good of an environment to live in.
Posted by raylindairy | May 30, 2011, 7:33 AMLiked reading about this thanks for posting! We are just starting this at one of the dairies excited to get started. Dairy cows work hard for us, they deserve the best!!
Posted by kathy | June 8, 2011, 9:08 PMThanks, let me know how it goes.
Posted by raylindairy | June 8, 2011, 10:29 PM