Corral manure

Now that all the cows have given birth it was time to keep them in the corral for the month of May to allow the grass to grow.  First I wanted to clean most of the manure out of the corral.

I had already raked the manure out of the loafing shed into a large pile.  Other than removing/raking the manure from a few other areas of the corral the main area left was where I had placed the hay feeder at the beginning of the year and had fed four large bales.  While the corral was dry due a dry Spring, the hay feeder area was still a mucky slightly wet area.

I estimated I would haul out three maybe four pickup loads of manure and I could get it done one evening.  Wrong.   I hauled out five and a half loads (six if you count a half a load from the bull/yearling side of the corral).  It took me several days.  Once I got to the hay feeder area I really had to dig hard to shovel out the mixture of hay and manure.  Underneath the top layer it was wet.

I unloaded four pickup loads around my fruit trees.  The rest of the manure was unloaded along the small trees in the NE pasture.  Each pickup load took almost two hours to load then unload as I has to shovel the manure out of the pickup and spread it around.  I wish I had a tractor with a bucket.  It would have been so much quicker and easier.

Does this look like 5 1/2 pickup loads to you?

One pickup load

Wet.  Took a day to surface dry.

Daisy was happy I was working in the corral.  That meant she could supervise.

Daisy giving directions on where to drive to unload the manure.

Buddy the bull and one steer had to supervise when I got a half a load of manure from their part of the corral.