How to pack manure...

[mamahen]

or how to have warm, dry goats.

Thats what I want to know. The post on how hardy goats are got me thinking...Vicki posted on how a good manure pack is an art form.

We always try to build up the pack, but when we kneel, our knees are soaked (and stinky!). According to what Vicki said, if you kneel, you should be dry. So what am I doing wrong?

SOmeone tell me!!

[Alice In TX/MO]

I'm confused.

[GoldenWood Farm]

Me to....I am at a loss of how to keep the girls warm and dry..it got down in the the 30's last night and I felt bad for the girls as I know they where cold. They had hay and warm bedding but the bedding gets wet SO easy! I use straw to bed down with...should I be using something else to absorb the moisture better?

I want to keep them warm and dry this winter....help!

MotherClucker
ps: I think this is going to be a more harsh cold winter than last year's mild winter.

[debitaber]

add more straw ,we do it all winter, and our floor geets rather high, but the girls are high and dry, for sure.

[gccrook]

Originally Posted by MotherClucker

Me to....I am at a loss of how to keep the girls warm and dry..it got down in the the 30's last night and I felt bad for the girls as I know they where cold. They had hay and warm bedding but the bedding gets wet SO easy! I use straw to bed down with...should I be using something else to absorb the moisture better?

I want to keep them warm and dry this winter....help!

MotherClucker
ps: I think this is going to be a more harsh cold winter than last year's mild winter.

The problem with this statement (not picking on Motherclucker, just this statement in general made by many people) is that it assumes the animal is cold because we are cold. Animals that have problems with the cold are generally not furry. My goats already have extra thick coats for the winter, and I provide a place for them to get out of the wind, so their coats are not overly taxed by the cold wind. However, they tend to spend little time in there except at night. Then, they will bunch together to keep themselves as warm as they need. It is important to keep the bedding as dry as possible, but again, they are not as susceptible to that littel bit of wet that you feel when you kneel down, because it does not get throught their coat. All of this assumes healthy goats, with healthy coats.

[mpillow]

Well if any of you could see the inside of my barn you'd crap blue brick sideways The pigs have two of the goat stalls(for kidding) and one side is a muck pit and the other they have rooted(a 3 foot pack).
Its done nothing but rain all year here....nothing is dry....and the pigs are not helping any but they are moving into the freezer Dec.2
My barn door is open to the pasture 24/7....the goats and calf are fed outside unless it rains....I do keep some straw around to spread for days on end of rain...the calf, however seems to drain the main vein in the barn every time But moisture is necessary for composting (heat) to happen.

I do not even worry about my goats until its below 10 degrees for a "HIGH" of the day.....I tack up some half sheets of OSB in the corners and feed them hay more often and warm water. And with the cold temps come super low humidity levels in the air----things dry rapidly and you get static.

When my pigs go off to Never Again Land....my brother is going to clean out the barn for his half of a pig and I might have an 18 cord load of shavings brought in depending on the price... And if not I'll just start feeding hay inside the barn and let it go until who knows when.....

The concerns of animal raising in the cold can be as complicated or simple as you choose...

[susanne]

unfortunately wet bedding brings also fumes of ammonia and this is not healthy.
i use shavings combined with straw and this helps to keep them dry. you need a good thick layer of srtaw to keep it dry.
this way i have no ammonia built up either.
to help the compost process once in a while i go with the pitch fork and stick it in the bedding to get air in.

[Sweet Goats]

I tell my daughter to get on her hands and knees when she argues with me about cleaning the barn. If she can smell the amonia, then they can also. They are living at that leval and it is very harmful to them. We clean out our barns quite often. it makes for a great compost pile.

[goatmarm]

---

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

Your manure pack, and hopefully it is mostly straw or shavings and only some manure, is nothing but a compost pile, in which down underneath things are heating up...killing parasites wintering over in the warmth, and the lighter fluffier dryer material on the top. Deep enough with good sandy drainage at the bottom of the pile, it stays dry ontop, until the girls start digging to china to kid! If your barn is wet with no bedding, because you need to make a footing around it to stop ground water runoff (I have metal for this because I couldn't afford cement) or from blowing rain coming in and soaking the floor. If goats on your bare barn floor are soaking the floor, your area is to small for as many goats as you have, or your ground is not draining properly, add sand for drainage.

Keeping the does up off the cold ground in your weather up north is probably essentail. Down here it's about keeping them out of the cold humid sand, which chills even those in fur coats. And nothing is prettier than a barn full of shavings. Vicki

[Blue Oak Ranch]

I have floorless towable houses for my pasture rotation - and heavy silty loam soils. Shavings or straw on heavy or clayey soils just soak up the muck.

I've found that breaking the ground contact between the straw bedding and the soil is very helpful. I put about four inches of wood chips - literally, shredded trees that landscaping companies drop off for free (no oleander) in the house, on the dirt - and then top off with several inches of straw. The wood chips act like gravel - the pieces don't mat down, and leave space for urine to drain off and air spaces to help keep the bedding drier. The manure itself is very dry - nice little berries that sift down into the wood chips. I love using shavings with the chickens, but I tend to use straw for the goaties as the shavings tend to pack the spaces between the wood chips.

I've heard other people use a product called Woody Pet, which is pine sawdust compressed into pellets, for the same reasons - drainage. There's something similar for horse stall bedding. But as long as I get pine or oak chips for free, that's what I'll use.

When I tow the house to a new location, I lift the house corners up with a shovel or the tractor's front loader to "break the seal" of it sitting there for a while - and tow it up and over the bedding pile. I can then scoop the bedding up with the front loader and move it wherever I need it...under the avocado trees, or the compost pile, or the garden plot.

Cheers!

Katherine

[GoldenWood Farm]

gccrook I know my critters are cold when I see them standing and shivering. They are getting their winter coats on but the cold temps hit real quick this year which isn't normal...it was a very drastic change in weather (try sunny and 85 degrees to 40-50 and rainy then going in to freezing at night).

They have free choice hay at their disposal but I think I need to deep bed their bedding again...I cleaned it out about 1 month ago and I need to build it up again.

MotherClucker

[mpillow]

Forgot to mention that I do have a tarp between the ground and manure pack...its the goal to dig down to the tarp ....and my barn is on the high part of a knoll so it does drain quite well....but sometimes when kids clean stalls they'll mound up the natural drainage places and backup the water....so I just have to clean up the waterways....and my stalls are higher than my common area in the barn.
Its raining AGAIN

I've added leaves quite a few times this Fall....and before we had pigs I had a long kidder and actually slept in the stall w/ momma so it cant be too wet or smelly

Its 40 degrees and raining and my mostly Nubians are just fine....the steam was coming off the pig wallow this morning---very stinky. 30 days and they are gone!

[mamahen]

I didn't have this problem with our old barn, but the new one is in a different location. And this is our first winter with it.

The soil in my area is very heavy clay. We had to dump 3-4 loads of shale to make the area level enough for the new barn. So I have shale & clay. Lots of straw on top, plus a solid pallet in the stall. The pallet is regular sized, but instead of slats, it has OSB on it. We were given 15 pallets, and this was the only one like that. They don't seem wet overall. But one corner is pretty soggy. Maybe the pee corner?

The calf is quite the little pee'er I must say!! Her area is usually pretty damp, I keep adding, and pretty soon she's gonna be over the top of her manger! Would shaving & straw work better together? I know the shavings before, really packed on the wooden floor & it was litarally a PAIN to get them out in the spring! I broke an ankle & put out my back! (Some areas were still frozen)

[Bearfootfarm]

It seems to me a tarp would defeat the purpose of allowing things to drain. I have dirt floors in my stalls and put down a layer of lime followed by about 10 inches of straw. The lime controls the ammonia and odors, and the straw keeps them off the dirt while allowing moisture to soak into the ground. As soon as I begin to detect any odors I repeat the layering. I dont really worry about them being cold but I do try hard to make sure they have a dry area to lie in.

[cayenne47]

ok im dumb. what is OSB????

[mpillow]

chip board = OSB (oriented Strand board) $5-6 a sheet

In the Spring when the ground was frzn still and it rained the pack w/o the tarp under was wicking up the run-off....it has helped tremendously...there are holes poked in it now but its still working..(Spring was the only time this was a problem)

[fishhead]

Does anyone deliberately build drainage into the floor by using drain tile (discharging outside and beach sand or crushed rock under the bedding or no bedding?

I once saw a pheasant pen with a thick layer of sand and no bedding. It was completely dry even around the waterers. The droppings were raked up after they dried.

[TwoAcresAndAGoat]

I have 6 covered chain link pens with a drain system under a sand base which has paving blocks over the sand, forming the floor. I then use straw for bedding for my chicken pens. Straw works best for me as it won't wash down the drain system and clog it up. I can pick out the straw and manure when it needs to be cleaned.