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> And of course there’s manure. A dairy cow produces an average of 68 kilograms of manure a day. All that manure has to be collected and the barn floors regular

> And of course there’s manure. A dairy cow produces an average of 68 kilograms of manure a day. All that manure has to be collected and the barn floors regularly cleaned. Ok that's a stat I didn't expect. 68kg! That's ~150lbs! Holy crap.

WorkerBee28474 2y ago
Might be worth mentioning that half of that will be water content.
- delecti 2y ago
  Does that matter? I'm not trying to be sarcastic or glib, does it help in any way that it's half water? It's probably not an accurate comparison, but I don't find any consolation in the fact that a lot of the bulk/weight of cleaning my cat's litter box is water. I don't know if it meaningfully changes anything about the task for a cow though.
  - toddmatthews 2y ago
    its actually 70-90% water. it matters because water is very heavy, and whats left over will be dramatically less after it dries out. its a large amount of waste, but its not 150lbs of solids
    - Isamu 2y ago
      Yeah cow manure is VERY wet. Compare to horse manure which is relatively dry, easy to shovel.
    - delecti 2y ago
      The context was shoveling a barn, and you can't leave it until it dries out, can you? I don't know how often you have to clean a barn, or how long it takes for the manure to dry, but my naive assumption would be that it takes too long to dry for how often you need to shovel.
      - WorkerBee28474 2y ago
        You assumption is correct. It is scraped out while still wet. Tangentially, that can be a job for robots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz4t0qIISTs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz4t0qIISTs
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
pests 2y ago
I sometimes watch a concrete YouTuber. He recently did a manure pump pit. I honestly didn't realize the scale of manure management. A massive holding tank for all the produced waste. All the areas with cows will have ways of pushing and moving that manure out into trenches and eventually into a massive pit. The pump pit was so they could get to the lowest point and pump the product into its next stage of processing / use. Its a valuable byproduct so worth dealing with but just never thought about what goes in must come out, and cows eat a lot.

WorkerBee28474 2y ago

Might be worth mentioning that half of that will be water content.

delecti 2y ago
Does that matter? I'm not trying to be sarcastic or glib, does it help in any way that it's half water? It's probably not an accurate comparison, but I don't find any consolation in the fact that a lot of the bulk/weight of cleaning my cat's litter box is water. I don't know if it meaningfully changes anything about the task for a cow though.
- toddmatthews 2y ago
  its actually 70-90% water. it matters because water is very heavy, and whats left over will be dramatically less after it dries out. its a large amount of waste, but its not 150lbs of solids
  - Isamu 2y ago
    Yeah cow manure is VERY wet. Compare to horse manure which is relatively dry, easy to shovel.
  - delecti 2y ago
    The context was shoveling a barn, and you can't leave it until it dries out, can you? I don't know how often you have to clean a barn, or how long it takes for the manure to dry, but my naive assumption would be that it takes too long to dry for how often you need to shovel.
    - WorkerBee28474 2y ago
      You assumption is correct. It is scraped out while still wet. Tangentially, that can be a job for robots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz4t0qIISTs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz4t0qIISTs
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

pests 2y ago

I sometimes watch a concrete YouTuber. He recently did a manure pump pit. I honestly didn't realize the scale of manure management. A massive holding tank for all the produced waste. All the areas with cows will have ways of pushing and moving that manure out into trenches and eventually into a massive pit. The pump pit was so they could get to the lowest point and pump the product into its next stage of processing / use. Its a valuable byproduct so worth dealing with but just never thought about what goes in must come out, and cows eat a lot.