by James I. Sprague, Ph.D., Livestock Nutritionist

Good public relations result from well maintained roads
The first impression of our facilities is a priority to successful cattle feedyards and farmsteads. Well maintained driveways and roads lead to a good first impressions as visitors enter feedyard. It is not uncommon for a feedyard to have several miles of roads, plus the cowboy or drover alleys.

Rex Stanley Feedyard utilizes a used road grader to maintain its roads and driveways.

Driveway maintenance
To maintain driveway at his feedyard, Ronnie Stanley, co-owner/co-manager at Rex Stanley Feedlot at Dodge City, Kansas, purchased a used, small road grader. He reports this unit is valuable for grading the driveway to the office and feedmill. He also grades the roads along the feedbunks. He says that he likes to grade the roads himself as it is one of the feedlot jobs he particularly enjoys.

Rear mounted scraper blades for three point tractors are also used. Some tractors may have a front mounted blade for grading work.

Smooth roads prevent feedtruck damage
Smooth roads are necessary to prevent feed trucks from breaking down. Not only the trucks, but the mixer boxes, the load cell scales and other sensitive equipment require maintained roads to help prevent damage. The truck mounted load cells are very “tough” units, but can be damaged over time by rough roads. The load cells are important for accurately weighing feed ingredients and rations.

Fixing wet spots
One of the challenges in road maintenance is low spots that will accumulate water. The solution is not a “band-aid” treatment, but “surgery” of the area. Surface water may need to be redirected away from the trouble spot. The problem area may also need to be “dug out,” with new fill and rock replaced, and a new surface applied.

Grading or floating out ruts
After a rain, the timing of grading or floating roads is important. If the grading is done after the road has had some time to dry, ruts can be graded or floated out. The equipment used can be a grader of many types or floats pulled behind a farm tractor. If grader blades are rear mounted on three point hitches or on front mounted blades, the blades need to be mounted at an angle to grade properly.

Home made road floats
Floats can be made from used grader blades or other hard steel, salvaged from soil harrowing equipment. The length between the front and the back scraper blade should be at least four feet or more for smoothing out ruts in feedlot roads. The blades should be mounted to only cut one to two inches of road material as it is pulled along the surface. The purpose of a float is to smooth out the ruts rather than severely grading the surface of the road.

Resurfacing roads
Many materials are used for resurfacing feedlot roads. Fine gravel or cracked rock is the most common material. Another material is crushed limestone rock. Crushed limestone may be produced from either a soft or a hard limestone. The soft limestone will breakdown with truck traffic and produce a very fine surface, and one of the problems is they may become dusty under dry conditions. Fly ash has been used for roads successfully by Dale Fritzler and his operation near Two Buttes, Colorado. They not only use the fly ash material for their roads and driveways, but also have used it for the pad area, back of the feed bunks. He reports the surface will pack down and get very hard, like pavement. The pad area will need some maintenance next to the feedbunks.

Dust control of roads
Many feedlots will use a water truck to apply water to feedlot roads for dust control. The water may be from runoff ponds. One of the newest techniques for limestone roads is to apply a surface of bentonite mixed with limestone road aggregate. A mix with eight percent sodium bentonite combined with crushed limestone aggregate is the suggested mixture based on research in Iowa reported by the U.S. Road web site. Sodium lignin sulfonate, a by-product of the wood pulp industry, can also be applied to roads for dust control. Calcium chloride is a good dust control agent, but can cause equipment to rust, and the run-off of the chlorides cause a problem of stream pollution. ©

Dr. Sprague welcomes comments and questions on his articles. Feel free to write to him at 625 Grandview, Newton, Kansas, 67114 or by call him at 316-283-8692.