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ecmn | we have a small group of steers, we have made a couple clay mounds, we dont bed at all during the summer and the animals stay pretty clean.
during the winter we use soybean stubble and will add corn stuble in the future. we bed on the mounds, we dont do any cleaning until summer time when it gets dry to drive in there. for our cold climate the pack gets warm and stays warm and that helps keep the animals comfy. sometimes we stir it up to get some dry bedding from underneath to the top to try to stretch the bales out a little farther so we dont use so many. we used to use a patz round bale chopper and blow chopped straw in the lean to for the steers. worked good other than the fact that you had 2 tractor running, it was slow and the chopper knifes always needed to be sharpened. with the corn or soybean stuble the bales fall apart, take the graple of the bucket to toss it around, in minutes you are done.
i milk for a guy that does a manure pack for the milking herd. 100 cows in a modified machine shed turned loafing shed. he has used straw's in the past and this year is trying saw dust. the saw dust is nice in the fact that he puts a semi load in there every 3-4 weeks. every morning after the cows leave he runs in there with a rock bucket or manure bucket (the ones with teeth on a 6" spacing) to stir it up. works pretty good but there is the monthly check to write.
on the other hand, he bought our bale chopper, with chopped straw you had the cost of the straw plus running a guy and tractor every other morning to chop bedding. in the long run cost is probably a wash between the two systems but the saw dust is working far better in less labor and machine hours. | |
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Bedding question
