Deep Bedding Maintenance

It’s felt like spring for quite a while now, but the beef cows are in the feeding shed/sacrifice area until the first part of April at least.  Waiting for grass to grow is agonizing.  Feeding out the winter’s hay supply is also agonizing.

The morning after

Every morning the shed looks like this.  The front of the shed where the feeder panels are is the most soiled, and most compacted due to the fact that the cattle stand there to eat.  After they fill up, they lounge in the back.

After bedding

So every morning, we run the cows outside so we can bed in peace.  A dog helps, while we don’t use our pups for herding, they sure come in handy to keep the cows out of the barn.  Aussies are nice that way, they need a little bit of a job, but not too much.

Sacrifice area

Rather than have a sacrifice pasture, we have a sacrifice area.  The smaller the better, because it will forever be a ruined sacrificed area.  So much impact, so much manure and urine, it grows weeds mostly through the summer.  So you either build a gigantic barn or you have an area like this.  It’s not the end of the world, but it’s not pretty.

Greer

grass hay on top, oat straw on bottom

Our bedding material of choice is straw, usually oat or barley depending on what is available from the farmer we buy our straw from.  Economics plays a part here, as the grain straw is the most affordable.  Shavings or wood chips would be great and have a higher carbon component which translates to a higher manure and urine absorption rate, but wood products are expensive.  If you have access to free wood chips from utility crews, nab the chips.  We’re always on the lookout for carbon to add to the fertility machine. This might be a good place to add that the higher the carbon bedding material is, the less time you have to spend laying down bedding.  Other factors too are the number of animals and the space.  You get a feel for it.  You want the animals to have a clean, comfortable bed but it doesn’t have to fair stall quality either.  Basically just avoid the caked on manure look that is unfortunately too common.

straw from J4 Farms – Warren Oregon

 

After we banish the cows we put the determined amount of bales in the shed.  Wet days we use more, dry days less.  About once a week we add shavings/horse manure to up the carbon ratio a bit, and maybe a bag of lime. You’ll develop an eye for what is needed.  Just remember this is fertilizer you are making for your farm.

We keep close track of the twine, it either ends up in a cow, or in the compost and wrapped about the beaters and other various parts of the manure spreader.  Neither option is good.  Sick cows and a mad husband are two things I really don’t want to see.

Our tool of choice for breaking up the straw flakes?  A three-tined pitchfork.  These are our hay forks and never to be confused with a manure fork.  That being said, we are very careful to only stab the clean straw flakes with the tines of these forks.  1)  I want to keep manure away from the hay the cows have to eat.  2) It’s easier, manure forks have more tines and don’t glide as easy into the straw.  So cleanliness and less work.  If that’s still confusing, just think of your household and the toilet brush, yes, it’s a brush but you probably wouldn’t use it to scrub anything your food touches.  The pitchforks are tools and have specific uses.  Our manure forks are always stored away from the hay areas, and the hay forks are usually stored stabbed into the hay or straw.

I have to say, I bed Jane’s stall by shaking a few flakes of straw after picking her stall each day, and that is about the limit for my hands and wrists.  It’s the one chore on the farm and in the garden that kills my hands.  The pitchfork method is much easier on the wrist, but it does take some forearm strength to shake those bales out.  I split a lot of firewood and hand milk so that seems to keep my forearms in shape for this chore.

All in all this chore takes about thirty minutes a day.  That includes topping off water troughs, feeding and bedding.  It’s kind of fun seeing how high we can stack it.

 

 

 

Advertisement