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The result is an alley clean of manure and sand. This is important in cow health. The cleaner the cows are, the better health, production and milk quality will be. |
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The flush, on the way down the alley, picks up sand that has been kicked into the alley. All flushes flow into piping that dumps the flush into a sand separator. The separator consists of a long channel with an auger at the bottom of it. As the flush flows down the channel the sand settles out of the flush. The flush is still moving too fast for manure and other solids to settle out and they continue through the separator. The auger at the bottom of the channel pulls the sand together and dumps it into a cross auger that pulls the sand out of the channel and onto a stacking conveyer that stacks the sand seen here. The separator removes 90% of the sand from the flush and cleans it up enough to the point that we can reuse the sand to bed with. |
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After the sand is removed the flush flows into a primary tank which has agitators and pumps in it. Those are the vertical green devices seen in this picture. This keeps manure and solids in suspension so it can be pumped above into the tan building seen here where the solid separator is. |
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The solid separator, seen here with the top cover removed, takes a large portion of the solids out of the flush. The paddles seen in this picture rotate and brush the solids over a screen into the far part of the separator where rollers rotate and squeeze the solids dry.
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