The following is a list of uses for cow poo:
* Skeet shooting
* Fuel for cooking
* Heating greenhouses (Apparently cow poo is hot! Someone should tell Paris.)
* Mushroom cultivation (It’s my understanding, though, that mushrooms aren’t easily cultivated. It’s a fascinating niche of produce harvesting).
* Bio-gas
* AND FLOORING!
With a grant of just $5k, researchers at Michigan State created flooring made from the solid fiber in cow manure. The fiber would replace the sawdust currently used. Sad for sawdust, but good for the poo. It doesn’t stink, it doesn’t gush between your toes, and it’s equally lovely as cork flooring. Here’s a pic.
Such a much better idea than letting it fester in shit ponds and sink into aquifers.
We nurse at the teat, we feast at the shoulder, we sashay under the skin, and we live by the anus of our bovine buddies. I just read that we need less than one serving of red meat per week, but it didn’t mention RDA for dairy, leather, or bestiality. (My dad has a horrifyingly funny story about a pal who had a cow flop in his lowered pants.) Could anything be more blessed than a bovine?
Here’s the science-y part, you geeks. (From the Associated Press) Under pressure from regulators and the public, more large livestock operations are installing expensive manure treatment systems known as anaerobic digesters. The digesters use heat to deodorize and sterilize manure, while capturing and using the methane gas it produces to generate electricity. The systems also separate phosphorus-laden liquid fertilizer from semisolid plant residue. The solids have some known uses, including animal bedding and potting soil.
Scientists at Michigan State in East Lansing and at the USDA’s Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wis., are conducting tests on various types of fiberboard made with the “digester solids.” As with the wood-based original, the manure-based product is made by combining fibers with a chemical resin, then subjecting the mixture to heat and pressure. So far, fiberboard made with digester solids seems to match or beat the quality of wood-based products.
Okay, but how about we get rid of the chemical resins to be way greener? Has anyone told Ed Begley, Jr. about this?
Aside: I was flapping my yaps to a gal pal about how cool it would be to live off the grid. She said, “Oh, I know a lot of people like that. They are called Africans.” LOL. Okay, out of context, that is HORRID. She works in an orphanage in Zambia and really does know people who live off the grid. She was pointing out how frivolous my thought process is and it was FUN-nay. It occurs to me that some people live in cow poo houses that never underwent a sterilization process.
Here’s something to think about, should people who live in poo houses throw stones?