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Question for Dairy farmers

S

samn40

Well-known Member
Following on from FarmerJohns post (re the new milking barn) Do many of you bed the freestall cubicles with sand? Do you have any problems with it?
We did try it on our farm for a few years, got the sand dredged from the lough/lake so it was real dead, not sharp like building sand....It worked great at first kept the cows real clean but then we found we had a high instance of e-coli mastitis....The sand was irritating the cows teats and giving the trouble. Then we had a big problem with the manure/slurry, it just would not mix and stay in suspense in the slurry.....so we got in the pit with the shovel and filled it into spreaders, it eat the bearings outta everything. Sawdust-shavings mixed provided a good stopgap for a year or two but we were afraid of the ground getting too acidic so we finally fitted box mattresses...over 20 years ago and still good! I just hope you guys have had more luck or have done something different and I do hope John's brother doesn't have these problems.....Maybe fore-warned is fore-armed???........Sam
 
Sam, my neighbor Sam uses ground up sheetrock. They give it away because it's from broken sheets and trimmings. The lime based 'rock' and the shredded paperboard give good absorption and the lime base kills most bacteria. The added bonus is the lime in the material gets spread when he cleans out the loafing areas...
 
We do dust the rear foot or so of the cubicles with lime daily, just a dusting is enough to absorb the pizz and keep every thing smelling of.........Cows!
Sam
 
I started out using washed sand from a local plant just for bedding. It supposedly washes all the dirt out and lowers bacteria. Problem with it is it freezes like a rock at 31. Then i switched to bank run sand because it dosent freeze until much colder but this year I'm using straw and I like it better and so does the spreader and fields. The worse part about sand is you can clean your spreader after every load but it still stays in the chains. When it freezes in there everything looks fine but I've watched as the links keep going straight instead of turn on the sprockets and there us nothing worse than fixing spreader chain all winter.
 
Sand bedding seems to be the favorite around here(michigan) I have used it for 15 years and haven't had problems with e-coli or anything else, it is hard on the spreader. The big guys that have lagoons/lake, agitate when they are pumping/spreading and when the liquid is gone they go in with a shovel or loader and clean up the solids. They also have sand seperators that clean the sand out of the manure before it enters the lagoon and then they reuse the sand...John
 

My neighbors used to use it. I sold it to them sometimes. It was hard on spreaders and didn't want to suck up into the pump. I have read about it working real well with a separation system where you reuse it.
 
My neighbor does not use any bedding and has not for years. He does use composite mats in the free stalls. The barn holds 700 cows and is insulated above the trusses. I see the cows quite frequently and they are as clean or cleaner then cows I see at other farms. The somatic cell and bacteria count is very low. Very little udder and leg problems. He does use alley scrapers and they run around the clock.
 
(quoted from post at 17:43:35 02/05/14) Sheet rock isnt made from lime
Click to expand...

True, but both are a form of calcium. Gypsum, or land plaster as it used to be known, does do good things for clay soils. There;s not much down side to using it.

http://cesonoma.ucanr.edu/files/27198.pdf
 
This is disturbing to learn. The mastitis is probably originating from any sand found near lakes, creek sloughs. This material harbors a rather dangerous type of mastitis causing bug, 'staff-aurous'.
Such bugs hide and don't always show up in CA mas test. The mastitis can't actually be seen, since it doesn't always curdle, like typical mastitis.
Get rid of that sand. CMT each cow or there's a goo9d chance those bugs will become so numerous in the herd, that the filters will plug for no apparent reason. Or get a hold of me, but soon.
 
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