FAN Bedding Recovery Unit (BRU)
Traditional bedding is not the best. Traditional bedding materials, such as sand, wood chips, sawdust, straw etc are purchased from outside and have a lot of disadvantages such as:
- Increased wear to all equipment
- Create injuries to cows
- Difficult to handle
- Not always available
- Materials too wet
- Unknown bacterial level
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High waste disposal costs
Furthermore, these former used materials:
- Increase the solid concentration in the manure
- Are labour intensive
- Are costly to buy
- Increase manure handling costs
Conversely rubber mats and mattresses:
- Are expensive to buy
- Need high maintenance
- Have to be replaces approximately every ten years
- May require additional bedding for top coverage
Economic benefits of using manure solids for bedding are:
- No purchase of bedding material needed
- Increase of cow comfort and health
- Decrease of costs
- Increase of milk production
- Reduction of costs for manure management
- No extra storage required
The benefits of perfect bedding material are:
- Improve comfort and health for your cows
- Easy to handle and dispose
- Economical Environmentally friendly
- Available every day
- Same quality every day
Table showing properties of perfect bedding material
The BRU includes two steps:
Primary solids separation to remove the large higher quality solids
The first step in the process is the separation of large fibres from the manure. These fibres are mainly undigested parts of feed such as corn silage and hay. This is performed by a special designed Press Screw Separator to remove only the large fibres and lower the moisture content. The solids are fed continuously with a screw conveyor into the compost drum dryer.
High speed, real-time composting
The second step in the process takes place in the insulated compost drum dryer where the solids are treated in an intensive aerobic process for sanitisation and drying. The process ensures a homogeneous product that is treated in a controlled process. The chemistry of the product is modified compared to that of fresh manure and therefore counteracts the mastitis producing micro organisms in the fresh manure. Finally the entire process is controlled by monitoring the treatment process.
