Is your top bedding doing more harm than good?

DCC Waterbeds require a small amount of top bedding to keep the beds dry and your dairy cows comfortable.

You spend countless hours of labor and sourcing to find the best top bedding to keep your dairy cows clean and comfortable. All top bedding materials used are not created equally. And some can actually do more harm than good.

Top bedding on a mattress or waterbed is used to reduce the bacteria and moisture that can wreak havoc on vulnerable udders and to provide comfort for the resting cow. Before sprinkling that next scoop of bedding in a stall, consider whether it is helping or hurting the cow.

Grab a handful of bedding and ask yourself these three questions:

1. Do any sharp objects poke your hand?

2. Is the top bedding wet?

3. How much top bedding is on the bed?

1. Do any sharp objects poke your hand?

When you squeeze a handful of bedding, does it hurt your hand? If it’s poking you, it is also poking the cow. This can cause problems with the udder, teats and legs. Being poked by the top bedding might irritate her pressure points or be a nuisance for the cow. Eliminating a top bedding stress for the cow will pay you dividends.

Depending on the material, there may be a simple solution. Perhaps straw can be chopped finer, or the sawdust provider can provide a different grade with fewer rough particles or a different wood source.

If you’re going to great lengths to eliminate stress for the cow in other areas of the farm, make sure you’re checking what impact the top bedding might have for the cow.

2. Is the top bedding wet?

Some materials like paper mill byproduct or dried manure solids are moist and may put your cow at risk of bacterial exposure. You should ask your paper mill supplier if you are able to get a drier product. If you are using dried manure solids, check with your separator supplier to see if your machine is performing correctly or if you can adjust the settings to get drier manure.

If the bedding is excessively wet or soiled after it’s in the stalls, examine stall setup and protocol. What is the maintenance procedure to keep the stalls clean and dry?

It’s also possible the problem is in the stall design. Check cow positioning within the stall. Is the neckrail positioned correctly? Are you using a brisket locator or relying on a mound of bedding at the front of the stall? Is there something out of line with manure management, such as a broken scraper or skid steer? Are stalls being maintained to your standards? Don’t spend time, money and energy improving top bedding if there are other reasons stalls are not clean and dry.

3. How much top bedding is on the bed?

Besides the hardness of the surface, consider why you are using that amount of top bedding. Are large and small cows together in the same pens? If so, then small cows will have more space to move in the stalls, and that means that they’re likely to make the stalls messier. In this case, more top bedding may be needed to dry up the added moisture in the stalls. Do you have a reliable and consistent supply of top bedding? If so, you may choose to use more because supply is not a concern. Are mattress covers ripped or has the foam layer started to pack? If mats are no longer providing adequate cow comfort, add more top bedding to provide additional comfort.

If you’re using top bedding simply for drying the stall surface, look at the amount of bedding, frequency and type of bedding to see if there’s any place to make adjustments without impacting cow comfort.

Dan Denman, The Robotic Dairyman, explains why he uses sawdust as top bedding on his DCC Waterbeds in this short video.

If you’d like to see more, check out this archived Progressive Dairy article here.

Cow Comfort Leads to Milk Production and Cow Longevity

Tender Loving Care Consulting with Tom Lorenzen will lead us through common questions about how stall comfort for your dairy cows leads to milk production and cow longevity.

"Cows position themselves in every valuable inch of the stall," Lorenzen says.