Animal Bedding

Bedding dairy cows is costly and time-consuming. 

The cost and availability of bedding fluctuates, and good consistent bedding can be expensive and hard to find. In some areas of the Northeast, securing conventional bedding, such as sawdust and straw is increasingly difficult, Well-managed sand can be good for herd health but hard on equipment. More dairies have turned to dairy manure solids (DMS) as a bedding source. However, there are many questions about using DMS as bedding such as will it have an affect on udder health and milk quality? How often should it be re-bed? Is there a cost/savings to using DMS? 

• Previous work evaluated herd health on six farms in the Northeast that used different types of DMS strategies. Key findings from this work:
• Sand bedding started out “cleaner” than DMS bedding, but once in the stalls, the bacterial load of several organisms was highest in sand.
• DMS with the least bacterial numbers in the unused tended to have the highest bacterial numbers in the used bedding.
• A comparison of bacterial concentrations in unused and used air-dried DMS versus composted DMS did not show composted to be consistently lower and calls into question the value of composting DMS prior to bedding.
• Bacteria in the unused bedding had little to no effect on bacteria in the used indicating that bacterial levels in used bedding are more dependent on bacterial levels in the manure of the cows using the stalls and how well the stalls are scraped, rather than the cleanliness of the bedding before it is place in the stalls.
• Levels of Streptococcus, Klebsiella and gram negative and positive bacteria were significantly higher on the teat ends of cows bedded on DMS versus those bedded on sand, but SCC and mastitis for those cows did not differ between bedding materials. Although mastitis differed among farm/bedding strategies, bacteria levels and properties of bedding had no effect on mastitis incidence.
• Lactation number, stage of lactation and SCC were the significant variables. Decreased levels of Klebsiella in the used bedding increased the odds of having an abnormal SCC for one FBS, and decreased moisture and fine particles in the used bedding increased the odds of having an abnormal SCC for a different FBS. For all others, abnormal cell counts were affected only by season, lactation number and milk production.
• Lameness was higher in cows bedded on sand compared to DMS. Economic analysis a savings of between 1 and 26 cents per hundred weight of milk produced through the use of manure solids as bedding on five farms. This study suggests that properly managed DMS can provide an economic benefit without compromising herd health.