All animals produce manure and this post is about removing the manure from our milking barn.
Look right behind the hooves of this cow and you will see a gutter.
When the cows manure or urinate, it falls into the gutter. The gutter runs the full length of our barn and under the manure is a chain. When we flip the switch, the chain pulls the manure and straw all the way through the gutter. There are wheels in the corners of the gutter which enables the chain to turn. The chain runs under the box stalls and up a chute outside.
On the right side of this picture, the strawy manure is coming out of the barn. On the left side, the empty chain is headed back into the barn.
The manure travels all the way up the chute . . .
And then falls to the ground when it reaches the top.
The strawy/manure pile. The Farmer will use the skid loader and push this pile onto the larger pile. When he has time, he will haul this onto the field.
A view of the whole chute.
The empty gutter the length of the barn.
The cows step over this gutter into their stalls all the time, but they panic if it is empty! They will refuse to step across, so we sweep the barn floor and the loose straw, sawdust and hay camouflages the emptiness. See the barn flites peeking out through the sawdust?
This is the way our barn is cleaned. Most dairy farms do not milk in tie stalls, so they don’t have a barn cleaner. A good place for your family to learn about the dairy industry is Fair Oaks Farm. Here is a You Tube video about Fair Oaks for you to watch.
Gretchen's Little Corner 
Wow! Didn’t know this before. That’s pretty interesting! Thanks Gretchen for all the farm education you post.
life on a farm! the things the rest of us do not know. I grew up next to a dairy farm but there were no children my age that lived on it so I never stopped by to learn any thing!