Caraway is telling us she has not been stood under the hay rack, getting covered in hay!!! It rather suits her actually! She is developing into a very sweet cow and is nowhere near as skittish as she was when outside in the field. The close proximity of the Pad is making her tamer and less fearful!! All to the good! The Cow Pad is coping well with what has actually been a pretty soggy couple of days since the cows went back inside. As you can see, the woodchip is looking good and as we now have large IBC tanks collecting water from the roof, the floors of the field shelters are nowhere near as wet as they were last year. We have the solid stable mats inside them (the same sort we are using in the goat shelters) and even with the copious amounts of wee a cow does, they are remaining relatively dry, and even where the damp is creeping up a little, it is not enough to soak all the way up through the bedding.
Mucking out takes about 30-40 minutes twice a day and that includes poo-picking from the woodchip and raking it all even. It’s a lovely job in many ways because it gives us time with the cows and also because it is such a great feeling when we know we have left them with clean dry shelters and clean woodchip for them to walk around on. Interestingly we have not had the bellowing we had when they were inside before: maybe they know they are better off here, rather than sinking in a soggy paddock.