Animal husbandry – Confining or housing – Stall
Reexamination Certificate
2001-08-09
2002-11-05
Jordan, Charles T. (Department: 3644)
Animal husbandry
Confining or housing
Stall
C119S171000, C294S050000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06474267
ABSTRACT:
This invention relates to a process and device for providing a long-lasting, easy-to-maintain, reduced-cost bedding for animals which are kept in stalls, through use of a sterile particulate pelletized sawdust bedding in conjunction with a novel tool for performing the sifting of manure droppings and urine-clumped material from the bedding. In its preferred form, the invention provides a converted pelletized material that provides safer footing for animals than pellets that have recently been introduced in this field.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
For a considerable period of time, livestock animals that are normally confined in stalls or pens have been provided with bedding material of natural straw. Such stalls, whether using straw bedding or newer materials which have come into use during the last 15-20 years, naturally require frequent removal of manure not only for the health and birthing of the animals, but also to reduce noxious odors and piles of manure associated with animal husbandry.
A major problem associated with straw is that when using it as bedding for horses for example, when cleaning a stall, manure and straw are picked up together with a pitchfork having wide spaces between the tines. The fork must enter the straw beneath the droppings, and whatever straw is also picked up is disposed of along with the manure. Both the manure and the straw are placed in a wheelbarrow and transported to a manure pile. Although care is taken to remove as little of the straw as possible, much is lost during manure removal. Periodically, the manure pile must be disposed of, either by being sold or given away for use as fertilizer, or by being buried as landfill. The higher the percentage of straw that is present in the manure pile, the less desirable and valuable it becomes as fertilizer. Composting time is also a problem. Together, these factors require some manure to become landfill. Landfill burial is of major concern to the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States Government. As a result, efforts are being made nationwide to reduce or eliminate use of straw as horse bedding.
When raising or keeping horses, depending on the type of horse being kept or raised, the bedding may be completely stripped daily or weekly, the former typically being the normal schedule for valuable thoroughbred horses and the latter being that maintained for general equines. Thusly, the cost and storage of straw, the extent to which it is lost in stall cleaning and the size of manure piles and their disposal are problems faced by all in the field.
During the past few decades, two additional types of bedding have come into fairly regular use. One common type is pine or cedar wood shavings or chips, the other being sawdust. Each has its advantages and disadvantages in comparison to straw and to each other. Since shavings and sawdust are small or fine in comparison to the long strands of straw, some sifting can take place during manure removal, resulting in considerably less of the bedding material being thrown out with the manure. However, since the normal tine spacing of typical forks used to remove the manure is between nine-sixteenths of an inch and one inch, much of the manure that has dried somewhat and been trampled by the horse moving around in the stall is also sifted through the fork and remains with the shavings or sawdust bedding after the stall has been cleaned. For obvious reasons of cost and cleanliness, it is undesirable to let manure particles smaller than one inch or a half-inch remain in the stall after a maintenance cleaning, and be removed only at such time as the stall is completely stripped. While sawdust can easily sift through the tines and return to the bedding, shavings, if of a length greater than the tine spacing and lying crosswise of the tines, will be thrown out with the manure and somewhat reduce the bedding volume at each stall cleaning. Like straw, a bed of shavings must be completely stripped at least weekly and a new bed started with fresh material. Wood shavings typically have aromatic hydrocarbons that can be detrimental to a horse's health, particularly its respiratory system. Further, shavings are subject to bacterial growth and retention of the noxious ammonia odor of urine as well as that of manure. Resins and natural oils from the shavings may prevent the manure from being used for fertilizer unless composted for a considerable period. If manure that is not properly composted is spread on a field too early, lime must frequently be spread over the manure to sweeten the soil, further adding to overall cost.
A typical problem with sawdust bedding is the inconsistency in size of the particles, its normally large moisture content which may be as little as 16% but as much as 90% and the amount of long splinters frequently found in sawdust bedding. Splinters may be more than two to four inches in length. The finer particles of sawdust, if they dry out in low humidity areas, can cause respiratory problems, referred to in the horse raising industry as the “heaves”. Except for the splinters, sawdust sifting can ordinarily be accomplished easily, leaving a fair percentage of the bedding behind during stall cleaning. But with existing manure forks, a high percentage of small, trampled manure particles are also left behind after cleaning a stall, resulting in a degraded bedding that may be required to be stripped more frequently for a high quality horse. The coat of some horses can even be stained or discolored by manure particles left behind. Sawdust is also subjected to the same detrimental oil or resin aspects of wood shavings with respect to the required length of time it takes to compost manure before it can be used as fertilizer.
Shavings and sawdust use results in a considerable reduction in the size of manure piles as compared to straw. But the increase of composting time of these wood products collected with manure makes their use as fertilizer less attractive. This can result in a higher percentage of manure that is contaminated with shavings and sawdust being directed to landfill disposal.
To a much lesser extent, other bedding materials have been tried with varying degrees of success. Peanut shells and grasses are but a few examples.
A few years ago, there was introduced to the horse husbandry trade in Canada a fourth type of bedding. A distributor of a cat litter material that was made from sawdust compressed into quarter-inch diameter hardened cylindrical pellets initiated use of the product for horse bedding. It was sold in 30# bags at around $6-$7 U.S. per bag and is achieving ever-increasing success. As these hardened pellets acquire moisture, they fluff up perhaps four times in volume into granulated sawdust. In cooperation with the Canadian distributor, I began experimentation with the pellets for the U.S. market. Friends and acquaintances who saw, heard or were told what I was doing greeted my efforts with considerable skepticism. They were aware that the pelletized sawdust material was considerably more expensive than other bedding materials used in the trade at the time. And although I realized that the pellets were sterilized during their processing by having pine tar resins and oils removed, I did not fully appreciate the advantageous labor and material savings implications of the sterile condition of the material. The sawdust is said by the distributor to, be dried for thirty minutes at 800° F. and then cooled to 145° F. It is then subjected to approximately 20-30,000 pounds pressure per square inch during extrusion into the quarter-inch diameter pellets, increasing the temperature back to 200° F. until the pellets produced finally cool to ambient temperature. Resulting pellets are about one-half inch in length. The end product has been sold for horse bedding by Woody Pet Products, Inc., of 15061 Marine Drive, White Rock, British Columbia, Canada for the last few years. When Woody Pet began commercializing the cat litter as horse bedding, and to this day to the best of my knowledge, the only relatively satisfactory means of clean
Hayes Bret
Jordan Charles T.
Weigl William
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