Friday, January 7, 2022

A toilet for cows. It's a thing. Really.

 


When cows enter the cubicle and enjoy a portion of pelleted feed, the CowToilet rubs against the suspensory ligament of their udder, stimulating a natural nerve reflex that causes them to urinate, as demonstrated in this video. The urine is collected in the CowToilet receptacle, removed by suction, and transported to an air-tight storage silo. 
The invention passed the muster of the German Agricultural Society’s DLG Innovation Society, an independent expert jury that awarded CowToilet the only Gold Innovation Award at the 2021 EuroTier, a massive animal agriculture trade show held every two years in Hannover, Germany.   
Keeping urine and manure separated is a major fete with multiple benefits. When the two combine, they volatilize into gaseous ammonia. This causes problems with on-farm air quality. Plus, ammonia has been implicated in promoting smog formation, acidifying soils, and damaging watersheds.



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