Homestead Chore #2 Manure Management

Manure. If you have a dairy cow, you have a lot of it and it has to be dealt with daily. Every day after the evening milking, the cow pen has to be *mucked out.* Each cleaning gets a wheel barrow full of old hay mixed in with manure. It's an average sized wheel barrow. This gets done every day. Rain or shine, heat or cold. Life or no life ;- )

I'm sure your asking, "Where does all of that *stuff* go?" Well, during the winter it gets dumped into the garden. The garden is HUGE. When the spring weather starts coming on, Hubby then tills it all into the garden. Does it ever make a garden grow!!! Best natural fertilizer there ever was ;- )

During the summer months we kind of scatter it throughout the 5 acres we live on. (Most of it goes into the woods.) Believe it or not, the smell is just about nonexistent. Once it has been in the sun for a few days it all dries out.

As you can see from the above pictures of *the girls* they LOVE it when a new pile gets dumped into the garden or woods. They will make a run for it once they are let out of the coop. They pick and scratch through it looking for bugs and grain. They are sort of our little composting machines. They know what they do are are really good at it ;- )

Farm chores and manure control, they go hand in hand when you own a dairy cow ;- )

Amanda

Matthew 6:33