Three treatments of bedding 4kg, 2kg and 0kg head/day of sawdust were carried out to clarify the effects of bedding on stall and udder cleanliness, and udder operaration time.
Three milking cows of various body weights were confined in stanchion stalls provided with a urine-feces mixes type gutter with a slotted steel cover. Floor length of each stall was adjusted to each cow body size based on the result of a previous study.
A half amount of sawdust (i. e. 2kg, 1kg and no use) was provided following stall floor cleaning conducted morning and evening each day.
Observations on (1) the manure spreaded area on stall floor, (2) solid matter on udder and (3) time required to wash the udder before milking were made every morning and evening for 6 days in succession, then repeated twice so that the total period of observation was 18 days.
The first two operations were made immediately before stall floor cleaning. All three operations were conducted by the same woker throughout the experimental period.
Remarkable differeces were found for using and not using bedding and morning and evening observations. In geneal, the more bedding was use, the greater was the effect on floor reduction and udders were dirty. However, morning observastions indicated no significant differences in stall floor dirtiness for bedding using 4 or 2kg of sowdust. Morning and evening observations showed significant differences in udder dirtiness for bedding using 4kg and 0kg. The time required for udder washing for bedding using 2kg and 0kg was essentially the same only at evening opereations.
It is clearly evident from the above that 4kg of sawdust for bedding per head, per day results in greater cleanliness of the stall floor and cow udders, and lesser time required for washing udders than 2kg for bedding. But to lessen the amount of sawdust without undesirable effect, 1kg and 2kg of sawdust for evening and morning, respectively, totaling 3kg per day, appears to give results as good as when using 4kg per day.
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