Question: What are the two biggest factors affecting quality of recycled sand, regardless of the separation method? Answer: Sand type and water quality.

Question: What is the purpose of freestall bedding? Answer: To provide a cow a clean, dry resting surface. Especially, this means creating an environment where exposure of teat ends to attack from mastitis-causing pathogens is minimized. Veterinarians and your family doctor alike will tell you: Minimize exposure to minimize infection rates.

Implementation of anaerobic digestion technology on U.S. dairies continues to stumble along. There are several reasons, with the most prevalent being economics, including: high capital costs, high or unknown operation and maintenance costs, reliability concerns and low revenues. Anaerobic digestion technology is proven to work, but the dollars and cents situation is simple reality and largely out of the control of producers. Despite the environmental benefits, a segment of producers also steer away from anaerobic digestion systems due to the perceived notion manure is the only bedding option. Here’s how sand bedding users are implementing sand-manure separation as part of digestion pretreatment.

Not all manure is conveyed equally, so to speak, because not all manure is subjected to the same environmental conditions after being “deposited” on the alley floor. One of those conditions is bedding, especially where sand bedding is concerned.