sawdust as bedding

Dieselrider · Dec 2, 2018

Have dry cherry sawdust. Can it be used as besding for cattle? I heard you shouldn't use blacj walnut but, what about cheery?

kcm.MN · Dec 2, 2018

I've heard that hardwood shouldn't be used for bedding, but I have no experiences good or bad. Seems like the reason was it was more dusty and would be more likely to cause breathing problems.

Old weldor · Dec 2, 2018

My father in-law used to dairy farm. 80-120 Holsteins. We had a local sawmill that made pallets. He used sawdust to bed the freestall barn.

rustyfarmall · Dec 2, 2018

Black walnut has tannic acid in it. Probably why you shouldn't use it.

Geo-TH,In · Dec 2, 2018

Friend says The leafs and seeds from black cherry are toxic if his horses eat them. We cut down all the trees in his pasture. Not sure about sawdust.

We used sawdust for cows bedding.

Friend with horses uses sawdust. Smells more like oak.

MSD · Dec 2, 2018

Have a nephew that has a business collecting scrap lumber and pallets, etc. and grinds it all into sawdust for cattle bedding.

showcrop · Dec 2, 2018

Hardwood sawdust is less absorbent than softwood. Horse people won't use it but that means nothing.

MtMan · Dec 2, 2018

My opinion about using sawdust for bedding of cows is okay. but I would not use it for horses especially male horses. Also plan to use more lime if you spread manure in your crop fields as the sawdust will make it more acidity.

Crazy Horse · Dec 2, 2018

MSD .... so the old nails and staples etc still in the sawdust as granular steel? Unless he removes that first which would be very time consuming, or maybe he cuts the wood out that has no metal in it.

bradley martin · Dec 2, 2018

The grinders that businesses here use to grind scrap lumber for landscape mulch have several banks of magnets that the shredded material passes over before being piled. A bit of steel still gets through, however. We have a pallet business only a few miles away that grinds a lot of scrap pallets and they won't sell for livestock bedding. We have gotten several loads from them in the past and there was the odd nail or spike in it.

fixerupper · Dec 2, 2018

I think we are mixing sawdust and wood chips together into one topic. For bedding most livestock people want wood chips. Sawdust is too fine and dusty. Sawdust has a tendency to pack into a hard mat instead of staying loose. In my neck of the woods the turkey growers sometimes use wood chips for bedding but they prefer peanut shells. Once in awhile they will go through the turkey buildings with a tiller to stir it up. I don't know what kind of wood is in the chips though.

Oregon Tractor Jack · Dec 2, 2018

Cherry wood should be okay. Black Walnut never ever for live stock. The wife has horses and they are very allergic to. It can kill them if they are exposed to long. We get our sawdust from a local cabinet shop. They mill about everything. Oak, pine, cherry, maple you name it. It all works just fine use in stalls. The shop keeps special containers for the black walnut so it doesn't get mixed in.

OTJ

Adirondack case guy · Dec 2, 2018

There is a game farm not too far from here. They had to go through the whole woods where animals grazed and browsed and remove all the cherry trees and brush. They said cherry would kill some of their deer and other animals.
Loren

D beatty · Dec 2, 2018

We used saw dust of mixed wood for our free stalls for milk cows and calf pens.

MSD · Dec 2, 2018

Couldn't say what he does about nails. I'll have to question him the next time I see him. I know he has several trucks running around the country gathering scrap lumber to grind. There is a place not to far from here the grinds a lot of pallets. The usually have a big pile of them waiting to be ground. We can drop off tree branches there also. Their sawdust goes to an ethanol plant to burn.

showcrop · Dec 2, 2018

(quoted from post at 16:02:20 12/02/18) I think we are mixing sawdust and wood chips together into one topic. For bedding most livestock people want wood chips. Sawdust is too fine and dusty. Sawdust has a tendency to pack into a hard mat instead of staying loose. In my neck of the woods the turkey growers sometimes use wood chips for bedding but they prefer peanut shells. Once in awhile they will go through the turkey buildings with a tiller to stir it up. I don't know what kind of wood is in the chips though.

Fixerupper, I think you mean shavings instead of chips. Shavings are best but harder to get. I never used horse manure on my hay ground even though I could get it for nothing and nearby due to the acidity from the pine shavings.

paul · Dec 2, 2018

Sounds like I should be getting a lot of horse manure.

My farm averages 7.4 ph, a fair amount is over 8.

Paul

sms · Dec 3, 2018

Back in the 60s and 70s when my dad had his sawmill the farmers would haul sawdust by the dumptruck loads for bedding. My dad sawed almost all hardwood. At that time I think the farms were dairy but most are beef now.

Billy NY · Dec 3, 2018

Black Cherry trees are abundant here and we always had them in the hedge rows. The only thing I can think of is wilted black cherry branches, the leaves create cyanide.

rockyridgefarm · Dec 3, 2018

I don't think it'd be very effective, and it'd be dusty. Usually wood bedding is softwood shavings, not hardwood sawdust. I have used bagged shavings in the past and they work well, but are more expensive than straw. Five years ago, I bought some "shavings" from a place in Graf, IA, and it turned out to be more like wood chips and sawdust. The stuff was garbage. Better for use as oil dry.

Destroked 450 · Dec 3, 2018

I delivered sawdust from the mill I worked at to dairy farms, horse farms and poultry growers, oak, maple, popular, cherry, and beech. Horse farms preferred popular because of it's lighter color, no one cared for red oak because it smelled like pee.
The acid in black walnut causes foot rot in live stock, anytime we sawed walnut all of the sawdust was used to fire boilers for kiln drying or paper production.
They have two 45 ft walking floor trailers, we'd deliver 80-100 cubic yards per load.
Wilted cherry leaves are poison to animals, the sawdust is not.

sawdust as bedding

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