Safety Grooving Barn Floors Saves Lives of Expensive Dairy Cattle

Safety grooving of concrete floors in dairy barns helps farmers who might otherwise lose a good deal of time and money from destruction of milk cows. Animals that slip on a barn floor may sustain such serious injuries that they must be slaughtered. This is a serious loss to the owner of a carefully nurtured dairy cow. Unfortunately, the animals that seem most susceptible to slipping and falling are heifers just starting to give milk. This means that the farmer has been making an investment in the cow for about 2 years and is just ready to begin getting production from her when the animal is lost. Cows that are not injured usually need help to get back on their feet.

When floors are wet, cows are almost as likely to fall (the farmers say “spill”) as if walking on ice. Cows have trouble negotiating corners and quickly become nervous, making their milk production drop off. Both the cows and the workers learn to move very carefully, as if walking on eggs.

Scabbling & Groove Flooring Eliminate Dairy Stall Accidents

Manure on the floor can also cause excessive slipperiness. Experience has shown that the trouble is eliminated by grooving the hardened concrete. Grooves are run in the same direction as the traffic in the alleys and spacing between grooves should be somewhat comparable to the width of a cow’s hoof. One company recommends a configuration of 1/2-inch grooves 3/4 inch deep located 3-3/4 inches on centers. Another suggests grooves 5/8 to 3/4 inch wide, spaced only 1-3/4 to 2-1/4 inch apart. Machines are adjusted so that almost any desirable configuration can be produced.

The noise of cutting the grooves with gasoline-powered machines while the cows are in the barn does not seem to bother them. Cows are already accustomed to the noise of tractors used to scrape out the barn.