Your Barn Shouldn’t STINK! Deep Litter Method

From animal confinements, or animals have got to be confined in the wintertime, or maybe you've got chickens and they've got to be in a small space, which you can do the same thing with, they're confined, you've got manure accumulation, and so the first thing we're trying to solve is just dealing with that manure and having it not turn into a biological, environmental, health risk issue. We're adding carbon in, and that starts to dry it out and starts to balance it out and create a nice, clean, healthy environment for the animals here in confinement. So throwing the grain out, we do this all season long in this deep bedding system, and the grain is ultimately to feed pigs later on. So cows are in here during the winter, and they're pooing. If we don't manage the poo, it's just going to become a wet, stinky, mushy mess even under roof, and so we add wood shavings. And the wood shavings absorb the urine and some of the poo and make a deep bedding where it keeps it drier, cleaner, and then that starts to build up though, that stacks up, and we've got to do something with it later. Ultimately, what we're going to do is remove it and take it to the pasture and spread it out to add the fertility out. It could be in the garden, but most of this will go out to the pasture. Adding the grain in allows us to bring the pigs in before we take it out of here, after the cows are gone, grass starts growing, and we'll send the cows out to pasture, and then we'll bring pigs in. The pigs will root the grain, so they'll go find this grain and they'll dig for it several feet deep. What they'll do is they then turn all this up and they aerate it for us. And they turn this all around, they loosen it because it does get compacted from the animals being on it and the tractor driving over it to deliver the shavings and the feed and everything. And so the pigs will come through and we'll feed them, right, this is their food, and they'll root for all of this grain and then turn all this up and loosen it up for us and prepare it to take it out and put it out into the field. Something satisfying about pigs coming and turning all of this up. Even the chickens come out here a little bit. We've actually done it with the chickens. A few years ago we had like 100 chickens and we just left them to free range, even during the winter, and threw out grain like this. They did a fantastic job of mixing the manure in, spreading it out, mixing it up with the shavings as we threw the grain out, but then they roosted and they pooped everywhere in the barn. We didn't like that so much. It was a mess. So I've kind of given up on that one. What kind of grain do you want to use? And I'm still learning, so I'm sure not the expert here. I've learned from Joel Salatin. What he uses and what a lot of guys use is corn. Corn, obviously it's large and it's very dense when it's been dried, and so it will last quite a long time in this deep bedding. There is moisture in here, so the moisture is eventually going to soak in and what it's going to do is it's going to ferment the feed, which you want. That gets it, makes the pigs find it, makes it available to them, findable. I'm sure the fermentation to a certain degree does something to the nutrition as well. But after a while, it's going to decompose. It's going to disintegrate. And so corn is your best because you're going to end up with two, three, four feet of material here and it's going to take time. You want it to last through the season until the cows go out and the pigs come back in. So corn is the preferred. The hard thing with corn a lot of times is finding non-GMO, non-sprayed corn, which is my problem. I cannot find that here. Peas could probably be another solution. I don't know. I can't think of anybody that I know that's done peas. That would make sense to me. A little bit of research I've done, barley is the next best thing. So you can use any whole grain. You want a whole grain. All grain, all seeds have a hard coating on them to resist decay simply so that they can make it through the wet and through all the seasons to come and sprout again. So any whole grain will work. You definitely want a whole grain as opposed to a cracked corn or some other kind of feed. And trust me, I've tried it. It disintegrates very quickly and it's not even there for the pigs. You want a whole grain. My understanding is that barley is the next best thing. A non-whole barley will last the longest compared to the smaller grains like barley or wheat or oats. And so we use barley and wheat. I'm using wheat at the moment because it's what I have access to. We ran out of the barley. And it's also later in the season. So we're, you know, we're another month, month and a half here and these cows will be going out. You can use anything, but you want what's going to last the longest and not break down too quickly. I've never gotten really close to them. I haven't really tried. They're curious if you'll take the time. They like your eyes. You've got nice dark skin around your eyes. He's curious. He sat out here one night. We just added shavings, you can see, into here. And shavings is the next element in deep bedding, right? The cows obviously give us poop in the urine, wood shavings or wood. It doesn't have to be shavings. I'll talk about that in a minute. That's the next element in deep bedding. And that is creating the balance in the system where you're getting a high accumulation of manure, nitrogen. And ultimately, if you let that go, you're going to have a high accumulation of pathogens. The cows are then standing pure poo and pee. That's obviously just not healthy, not good for their feet, not good for the environment. And so the wood shavings bring balance and the wood shavings are carbon, right? It's just pure carbon. And I use wood shavings because that's what I have access to in bulk for low cost. Wood chips would be another solution and might be a better solution because they're a bit larger and they don't break down as fast. The wood shavings are going to break down as fast. So arguably, we've got to add more and more often. I can't really speak to that because I've had wood shavings. That's what we have. And I'm always going to encourage anybody to use the resource that you have. We add the wood shavings in and that brings a balance. When you get into a system like this, how do you get it into balance? How do you get it where you want it to work well? And we're trying to accomplish a few different things, right? The first thing we're trying to solve is just dealing with that manure and having it not turn into a biological environmental health risk issue. And so we're adding carbon in and that starts to dry it out and starts to balance it out and create a nice, clean, healthy environment for the animals here in confinement. You're just trying to add enough shavings to keep this relatively dry and clean. And your nose, and you're going to hear this all the time when we're talking about natural sustainable homesteading, whether it's outside, whether it's in the kitchen with fermented canned foods, your nose is one of the things that's going to tell you. If you start to smell it, if it starts to smell bad, you've got a problem. You're not managing and you need more carbon. And so that's the general rule of thumb just from the point of view of managing animals, keeping it dry, keeping it healthy. We want to use this material. There's a lot of good fertility in here. So the next step is we're not just trying to keep a healthy environment. We're trying to create a material that's going to be very, very useful for us out on our property. This is a lot of manure. It's nitrogen rich. It's nutrient rich. And so whatever scale we're at, we want to be able to use it somewhere on the land. And so we're also trying to create a balance ultimately that's getting close to compost, something that's going to add fertility to our land. And that gets a little tricky for the homesteader. If you're making compost, and I've got a video on compost you can look at. There's a lot out there. You're generally trying to reach a carbon to nitrogen ratio of 30 to 1. That's what you're creating, right? The carbon materials with the nitrogen material 31. How do you do that in this environment? I don't know technically. And I'm not trying to technically. This is one, not something I'm doing for the garden, for the vegetable garden where I'd want to be a little precise. This is going out into the field. I'm just trying to get a good mix, a good ratio that's going to break down, turn into usable compost. And then I can then put out in the pasture and improve our pastures with. So I'm going to do that and I'm doing it by eye and smell. First by smell, it should not get stinky. If it gets smelly, if it smells rotten, if it smells like urea, sulfury, you've got a problem. You don't have enough carbon materials in it. From there, we're just trying to find that balance. And I just strive to keep something kind of like this over here. This is looking pretty good to me in here. I don't mind putting my hands in this. It's not perfectly dry. It's not soaking wet. I'm not going to squeeze any moisture out of it. I'm feeling good about this and what this is going to be. Some of this might be getting a little too dry. See, none of it's sticking together. It's fluffy. And this is out on the sides. The cows, you can see, they're not using it. Actually, this has been here for about three days. And so we're maybe not getting as much nitrogen in here. And it's great as far as cleanliness of the barn. It's fine. But this isn't going to break down. And it's maybe going to bind up, you know, some of the nitrogen. And so this is probably a little too dry. On the other side, let's go over here. This is mucky and wet. No, I'm not going to put my hands in it. You can see the poo and the peas melding together. There's organic material in there. It's too wet. And this needs more material. The reason this spot's too wet is because with this setup, I'm having a hard time getting over here with a tractor and getting enough material in it. So I've got a little bit of a management problem. I need to probably come out here with the tractor and work my way around and spend a little time in here and then think about how I can do the system a little bit different. This hasn't become a major problem because it has been getting material in it. But it is moving towards a problem. And so we'd want to do something about this. Looking at it that way, it's going to be a lot easier for the average homesteader to manage. You may not even have this many animals. You might have a cow or two. Maybe you've just got a few sheep. But it's the same concept no matter what scale you're at. You're looking for that nice balance. Unless you're wanting to be really, really precise, this is going to work for you. This is going to get you there. It's going to, you know, take care of your animals in confinement, create a good environment, and give you fertility that you can use out on your land somewhere. Okay, so we're getting our material down. We're keeping a clean environment. We're finding a little bit of carbon to nitrogen ratio. And now we want to add in the pig raiders. We want to think about utilizing the pigs to break this up for us in the spring, turn it up, aerate it, and get it ready for us to move and get out into the pasture. We've got to think about how much grain to put in here and when to put it in. I approach this from a very rustic homestead approach. I'm not trying to be extremely scientific. Just working to get the pigs some feed in here in a way that they're going to come and do their job. So there's two things you've got to think about. You've got to think about spreading it out horizontally and vertically. So you're going to start in the beginning of the season. You're going to lay some grain down. I'm working with barley. And I'm throwing it out by hand. And I'm just trying to get an even coverage of what I can do with hand. It's not super thin. It's not super thick. Just taking some handfuls and what goes out and spreading that evenly. And that's working pretty well. That's across the horizontal layer. Now your material is going to build. What I'm doing with the barley, because it's smaller, and I am worried about some of it maybe breaking down and composting, is I'm doing it every day. That may seem like a lot to you throughout four to six months, but really I'm only using a half to three-quarter tons of grain. That is not very much. It's not very expensive when you buy it in bulk. And it's going to pig feed. You're just putting that grain out in advance, right? Because when you put the pigs out here, you're not going to feed them anything else. You want them to do their job. You want them to work for their food. And in turn, solve the system for you and get all this material turned up, aerated, and ready to move out. So daily is a great rule of thumb. You know what? If you miss a day or two here and there, it doesn't really matter. If I was doing corn, which is much larger, that would probably get a bit more expensive, and I'd probably sprint it a little thinner and a little less often. I just can't really speak to that. So there you have it. There's our deep bedding system. And I'm getting excited because spring is on its way. And not too long, we're going to be moving out of here, and we're going to be getting out of pasture. And I'm going to bring you guys along on the progression to moving our animals from the barn, from deep bedding, out to a multi-species rotational grazing system this year. But in the meantime, check out this video on the basics of rotational grazing.