Carpet for Cows Can Be Udder Help to Farmers
At just $1 a square foot, farmers can lay this carpet down until the cows come home, and hopefully they’ll be coming home with fewer infections.
The federal Agriculture Department is selling a special polypropylene fabric to farmers for placement along streams and cow paths in an effort to prevent polluting runoff from lawns, parking lots and farms.
The carpet is also designed to keep cows’ udders from dragging in the mud, which can cause costly infections.
The material allows water to percolate through a layer of crushed gravel, then filter past a piece of fabric and into the soil. Loads of gravel that would normally disappear almost immediately into the mud now stay near the surface of the ground, said Greg Quillen, a technician with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Washington County.
Howard Gillis, a dairy farmer in Conklin, is hoping the carpet will keep him from losing money selling cows that pick up infections.
He spent more than $1,100 putting down cow carpet and gravel on a path from his milking shed to a field.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service is offering up to 75% cost-sharing agreements to some farmers. Quillen said farmers should take advantage of this before federal funds dry up.
“I tell people that someday it might be required and then the cost-share program might not be here,” he said.
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