The Bovine Bugle

Getting the freestalls ready for winter

With the end of the grazing season, the cows are starting to spend more time in the barn and less out in the pastures. This means it's time to repair and spruce up the freestalls that the cows use in the barn for lying down and resting. We call them freestalls because the cows can go in and out of them as they wish. They are not tied or chained up in the stall. Our barn has 40 freestalls that are used by our 50-60 cows. The stalls, approximately 4' wide x 7.5' long, have a sand base with dry sawdust on top.

The tandem dump truck hauled in the 14-yard load of sand a couple days ago. We waited until today to put the sand in the stalls because the boys were home and we would have extra help. We bring the sand into the barn with the loader tractor, dump the bucketload of sand on the concrete floor in front of the stalls, and then shovel the sand into the stalls. It's not a lot of fun, but with a few good helpers it only takes about 3 hours total to fill all the stalls.

Once the sand in the stalls is leveled out, we fill the dump trailer with dry sawdust and bring it into the barn. We then put a wheelbarrow-load of sawdust in the front of each freestall. The sawdust on top of the sand keeps the cows a little cleaner than just the sand and keeps the cows a little warmer in the cold northern Vermont winter.

We use dry sawdust because it helps reduce the incidence of mastitis infections in the cows' udders when compared to using "green" or wet sawdust. Dry sawdust cost a little more but it's worth it. The cows love it when the stalls are all bedded and ready to use. They stick their heads in the fresh sawdust and roll and rub them from side to side. Some will even start pawing the sand and sawdust out of the stalls, much to my dismay. If I catch them doing this I chase them out of the stall and threaten them that I'll stop bedding the stalls if they keep doing that.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

Posted by Blogger Chris at November 2, 2004 04:27 PM