Sand Bedding Helps Eliminate Mastitis

Sand Bedding Helps Eliminate Mastitis DAIRY EQUIPMENT & IDEAS Dairy Equipment & Ideas 18-3-38 You can't beat bedding cows with sand, says Michigan dairy farmer Larry Nobis of St. Johns, who runs a 550-cow herd, milking 3 times a day in a double-8 herringbone parlor. Nobis distributes 10 tons of sand a day in the free-stall barn, or about 40 lbs. per stall. He uses straw in maternity pens and saw-dust in the heifer barn but for milk cows, he says sand is the only way to go. Sand provides excellent drainage, leaving almost no liquids for bacterial growth, and it's non-organic, which also helps limit growth of bacteria. When the cow lies down, her udder and teats rest on dry, relatively clean sand. Nobis says he now has so little mastitis "it's. unbelievable". Handling 10 tons of sand a day is the biggest headache. He started using 80 lbs. of sand per clay per cow but switched from washed sand to a finer product containing a little clay so cows now take less with them when they leave the stalls. Alleys are scraped into a pit at one end of the barn. From there, a $12,000 cyclone pump, salvaged from an old gravel processing plant, moves the manure into the first of two 2-million gallon storage lagoons. The first lagoon is a settling pond for solids. Liquids flow into an adjacent lagoon. Sand would damage liquid manure handling equipment so he allows it to settle to the bottom of the lagoons. It's removed with a front end loader, piled up, and allowed to drain for 2 to 3 days. Liquids flow into the lagoons while the sand is then loaded onto a dump truck and spread on areas of fields with a high clay content. Nobis is looking fora better way to handle the sand once it gets into the pit or a way to reduce the amount of sand used per cow. (Kerri-Sue Lang in Ontario Farmer's Dairy Guide)

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