Cow Chips: Licking the Manger Clean

One of the projects that I took on this fall was repairing some of the mangers at the feed yard. Our hay mangers are built out of 2 x 6, 8, 10 or 12 lumber and most of them are in various stages of disrepair. The mangers are anywhere from completely non-existent to just rebuilt a couple of years ago. As I was looking at the mangers that I was working on I noticed something about the boards that make up the bottom of the manger. They were completely worn smooth, and in some cases worn away from the cows licking them.

I knew that cows have relatively rough tongues, but I never considered the sandpaper effect that their tongues would have on a piece of lumber. In some cases they have worn large holes in between the boards leaving large holes where they have licked the dirt clean as well. A cow tongue is not only rough, but they are long as well. On the mangers where there is a gap between the bottom board and the side board the cows will stick there tongue through and lick the ground on the outside of the manger. This is where the problem is created.

When the cows are stretching their tongues out to try and lick up whatever hay that they can get to there are two things that happen. First they wear the boards out creating larger holes in the manger. When the manger gets a hole the hay will fall into the hole compounding the whole problem as the cows try and fish this way-ward hay out of the holes with their tongues. Although it is amusing to watch, it creates a lot of work repairing the damage. Then the second problem is that our fence posts that hold the mangers are set into red blow sand. We do not set them with concrete, heaven forbid, we may want to take the post out some day, and therefore, as the cows lean and strain and stretch to try and reach whatever hay they can, they push the posts over and break the boards in the manger. This also creates work to repair the damage done.

I wonder why the cows will expend so much time and energy to pick up a few stray flakes of hay; most of which are so small I doubt that they can even taste them. They will stick their tongue out and flop it on the board or in some cases the dirt and drag it along so that any hay that is there will stick to their tongue. When they are finished the manger will be spotlessly clean. If only my kids were that efficient at cleaning up their plates, I would not need a dish washer.