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PO Box 2399 Appleton WI 54912-2399 920-738-1212 Toll Free: 866-404-5248 Fax: 800-535-7725 ©2008 Presto Products Company A Business of Reynolds Packaging Group |
New Agriweb® System Saves Free-Stall Sand, Reduces Wear and Tear on Manure Processing Equipment
So your cows are bored and like to liven things up by kicking sand out of their free-stall beds? Frustrated dairy farmers have found an economical way to keep free-stall sand bedding where it belongs, resulting in 60% or more savings on sand, reduced labor, greater cow comfort and less wear and tear on manure processing equipment. It’s the new Agriweb® soil confinement system from Presto Products Company.
Ray Schmitz is always on the lookout for ways to make operations on his Southwestern Wisconsin dairy farm more efficient. That's what he was doing in July of 1999 as he explored Farm Progress Days, Wisconsin's largest agricultural show. A new product caught Schmitz's eye as he passed the Presto Products Company booth--the Agriweb® soil stabilization and confinement system.
The Schmitzes have been operating their family farm for 21 years, and milk 400 Holsteins out of their 500-cow herd. Three years ago they built a new double-10 parallel milking parlor and free-stall barn. The main barn has room for 320 cows and features mattress stalls and a slatted floor with a step-dam gravity flow manure system. The second barn, where dry cows and 100 milk cows are housed, has 180 sand-bedded free stalls and uses a scrape system for manure removal.
When Schmitz saw Presto's cellular soil confinement system, he immediately envisioned how it might be used to solve an ongoing challenge: keeping sand in the free-stall beds. "Whether it's out of boredom, or they're trying to get flies off their back, our dry cows are constantly pawing at their sand bedding and throwing it out into the aisle behind their bed," says Schmitz. "Not only is the sand expensive and labor-intensive to replace, it gets mixed with manure and enters the lagoon, creating a lot of wear and tear on our processing equipment."
The Agriweb® system is an expandable, lightweight plastic honeycomb structure with individual cell compartments to confine sand in-fill. When placed at the bottom of a free-stall bed, the system prevents cows from digging deep enough to kick out significant amounts of sand.
Presto was showing the system at Farm Progress Days for soil stabilization uses such as erosion control and load support for access lanes and other high-use areas. While the product has been used in heavy-duty industrial applications for more than 20 years, the company was just beginning to sell it for agricultural applications.
"The more I talked with the Presto representative, the more convinced I was that the webbing could work in my free-stall beds," says Schmitz. Eager to solve his problem, Schmitz made arrangements with the Presto people to do a test installation.
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