Cow Salting and Hay Fluffing

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I am doing some grunt work for a nutritional study of dairy cows. It's not like I have tons of free time at the moment. However, helping out with the study now means that I will be able to assist with the calving in a few weeks. Currently, my official duties are morning hay fluffing and occasional evening cow salting.

In a post I made years ago, I talked about the term "chute fluffer" which was common in dog agility circles at the time. Since the term "fluffer" has an off-color origin in the porn industry, it may have fallen out of use by the agility folks by now (most likely as a result of prudish hand-wringing and cries of "think of the children" but that's a rant for another day). 

But my regular morning job with the cows is perfectly described by the title "hay fluffer." 

The cows are being housed in a new barn on campus for the duration of the study. This is the first time the barn has been used since the construction was completed, and like most things, there are a few maiden voyage bugs that need to be sorted out. 

All of the alfalfa hay that will be used in the study was stacked into an enormous wall of bales under the barn roof. I can understand why they want this stuff to be kept dry...but the wall of bales was placed so close to the pens that it creates all sorts of problems: can't easily get the carts carrying weighed allotments of hay to each pen, barely any room to use brooms and forks and shovels, and most importantly, there is no room at all for feeding troughs or bins. 

I know nothing at all about cow husbandry but the lack of feeding bins was pretty obvious to me the very first time I went to the barn. 

As a result, the evening alfalfa hay and the morning grass hay are tossed onto the concrete floor in front of each pen. The cows tear into the alfalfa in particular with gusto. It's quite something to watch and to hear. They can't stuff it into their mouths fast enough. It smells sweet to me so perhaps it tastes sweet to them. The aisle isn't that wide but it is wide enough that the cows eventually toss and spread their feed out so much that they can no longer reach it. 

Cows love alfalfa hay.

Enter the hay fluffer. Every morning at 10am I have to go to the barn and fork and sweep the hay back up to the pens (in the aisle that isn't wide enough to use either tool very effectively). This is a job that would be completely unnecessary if some thoughtful planning had gone into the placement of the wall of bales, leaving room for feeding bins. But I'm not in charge, I'm just free grad student labor.

I'm also the substitute cow salter for 6 or 8 evenings a month. Some of the cows are eating special alfalfa and get normal salt, but some of the cows are eating regular alfalfa so they get special salt. We need each treatment group to consume a certain amount of each type of salt. The salt is loose and medium to fine grained, sort of like table salt, only it's pink because it is actually a salt+mineral mix. So the cow salter comes along behind the evening feeder and sprinkles measured allotments of each type of salt on top of the alfalfa piled in front of each pen.  

Besides positioning myself to help with calving, one of the other benefits I've reaped is a brand new pair of boots:

I went with the steel-toed version because, well, toes are pretty useful for walking and things like that. Steel toes are probably overkill but one thing I learned from a couple of my petroleum industry jobs is that attention to safety is not time or money wasted. And boy oh boy, they are toasty warm in that damp, drafty barn! Yes, they are expensive but the remarkable attention to detail would surprise you.