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How dairy robots are changing work for cows and farmers

(spectrum.ieee.org)
225 points DonHopkins | 4 comments | 15 Apr 25 22:26 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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djoldman ◴[15 Apr 25 23:14 UTC] No.43699544[source]▶
> And of course there’s manure. A dairy cow produces an average of 68 kilograms of manure a day. All that manure has to be collected and the barn floors regularly cleaned.

Ok that's a stat I didn't expect. 68kg! That's ~150lbs! Holy crap.

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WorkerBee28474 ◴[15 Apr 25 23:24 UTC] No.43699624[source]▶
Might be worth mentioning that half of that will be water content.
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delecti ◴[15 Apr 25 23:37 UTC] No.43699724[source]▶
Does that matter? I'm not trying to be sarcastic or glib, does it help in any way that it's half water?

It's probably not an accurate comparison, but I don't find any consolation in the fact that a lot of the bulk/weight of cleaning my cat's litter box is water. I don't know if it meaningfully changes anything about the task for a cow though.

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1. toddmatthews ◴[15 Apr 25 23:45 UTC] No.43699773[source]▶
its actually 70-90% water. it matters because water is very heavy, and whats left over will be dramatically less after it dries out.

its a large amount of waste, but its not 150lbs of solids

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2. Isamu ◴[16 Apr 25 01:06 UTC] No.43700272[source]▶
Yeah cow manure is VERY wet.

Compare to horse manure which is relatively dry, easy to shovel.

3. delecti ◴[16 Apr 25 18:10 UTC] No.43708579[source]▶
The context was shoveling a barn, and you can't leave it until it dries out, can you? I don't know how often you have to clean a barn, or how long it takes for the manure to dry, but my naive assumption would be that it takes too long to dry for how often you need to shovel.
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4. WorkerBee28474 ◴[18 Apr 25 22:27 UTC] No.43732381[source]▶
You assumption is correct. It is scraped out while still wet.

Tangentially, that can be a job for robots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz4t0qIISTs