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Emily walks us through how to stay safe when working with grain bins, silos, bunkers, and manure pits. Super important topic that not only applies to our cattle producers but most of the agriculture industry as well.
Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
[music] [cow mooing]
Emily: Welcome everybody to The Moos Room. OG three here, my myself, I'm Emily, Dr. Joe, and Dr. Bradley J. Heinz, tenured professor, of course. Today, we are going to be talking a little bit about a topic that isn't directly related necessarily on the beef or dairy side, but is very much a component of cattle production and really any agricultural production, and that is agricultural confined spaces safety.
When we say confined spaces, we are talking about grain bins, silos, manure pits, anything along those lines. Again, confined space, and those are big causes or components in accidents and in fatalities as well.
Joe: This is something that Emily brought it up, and it surprises me how little we talk about it and how big of a problem it can be. I think if you've been in agriculture long enough, you know someone or a friend of a friend that's had an issue with something in one of these areas, and it's scary and it's super dangerous. I'm glad we're talking about it today. It isn't directly related to anything that goes moo today, but it definitely is an important topic, and it's something that everyone in agriculture deals with.
Emily: Yes, absolutely. It's especially prevalent in the upper midwest or north central region, however you want to define it. The states that usually have the most cases are Minnesota, North Dakota, Illinois. It definitely is an area of concern for agriculture across the country, but up here, even more. In 2019, Minnesota led the nation in confined spaces incidents and fatalities.
Thankfully in 2020, we gave up the crown to Illinois, but we're still historically in the top three for all time. Like you said, Joe, it's something that we maybe don't talk about much, and to me, we cannot talk about it enough. I'm really excited to be able to dive into it a little bit deeper here today. Again, this is not just grain bins, this is silos. It can be silage piles, bunkers, any of those things. Anything where there's a danger of entrapment.
Joe: I think I've dealt with bunk faces the most and that's just what I've seen the most that I've been in practice is bunk faces and how far away you really need to stand and how much you need to be looking at that face before you approach it and make sure that it's stable, those kind of things. I don't deal with anything upright very often. Brad, do you guys still utilize the silo up at Morris?
Brad: No, nothing like that anymore. We've gone away from all upright silos.
Joe: Is this part of it? Is it partly a safety issue, or why did you go away from them?
Brad: Of course, there's always safety issues. Even recently, they went away from upright silos at the campus [unintelligible 00:03:32] and St. Paul because of safety issues. All these silos, they're 30, 40 years old or more, and there's just lots of-- they're not new anymore, so lots of safety issues related to them.
Emily: A lot of those things from even 30, 40 years ago, they were not designed with safety in mind. They just weren't. That's the fact of it. That's why even when we talk equipment safety or anything, the biggest issue is always the older pieces of equipment that don't have guards or these different safety pieces of equipment in place. Then retrofitting them, some people they can't afford to do it, they just don't want to do it. We know across the state, across the region, we have a lot of structures on farms that are older than me, probably older than Bradley, maybe a few.
[crosstalk]
Joe: Which is old to be clear?
Brad: That's old.
Emily: Very old.
Joe: We shouldn't get too far here. Can you just describe the biggest danger associated with grain bins or silos?
Emily: Like I already said, entrapment is the thing we're concerned about in any confined space. I will briefly say when we're talking about anything with manure storage and handling, any of that entrapment and more specifically on that side, gas poisoning, asphyxiation, those types of concerns. Switching back here just to talk about any feed storage, so bunks, upright silos, grain bins, all of that. What we're really concerned about there, again, it's the entrapment piece, and a lot of it has to do with management of the crop before and during its time in the storage facility.
Last year, I know there were a lot of grain-related entrapment incidents because a lot of crop that went into bins or silos, what have you, was really, really wet, and so it required people to check on it more often. When grain is really wet, it's more likely to cake up and it can make a bridge or it can cake up along the sides or the walls of a bin or a silo. Then when you knock it down, there can be avalanche. If you're on top a bridged grain, it collapses, can fall on you.
A lot of those, like I said, the main thing we're looking at here is, again, management. A lot of this has to do with management because most often, entrapment cases, it's because people went into the bin. I always tell the farmers I work with, there is almost no reason you should go into a bin, especially without any safety equipment on. I understand that when you do have those spots that get stuck or you know there's crusted grain that you need to knock out, making sure that you're approaching that situation with safety as the first thing.
A lot of those pieces are PPE. That's your last line of defense. The first line is your management, and then the intermediate line is the way you're going to approach and solve the problem. I think that safety equipment's really important in this equation, but we can't depend on it fully. I mean, it can't just be like, "Oh, we can mismanage our grain because we have a harness for when we go in the bin." That's not how it works. It definitely starts on the front end.
Joe: That makes sense. We talk about management, we talk about prevention all the time. If you don't ever have to go into the bin to begin with, then it shouldn't be an issue. Let's say that I do have to go into the bin, what is my list of standard safety equipment that I should have if I have to go in?
Emily: I'll back up further than that as far as just safe practices. One thing would always be, make sure there is somebody outside of the bin, so if something does go wrong, there's somebody there immediately that can call 911. With that said, that second person, if something does go wrong, should never try to complete a rescue because we've heard case after case. I think two winters ago in Minnesota, we lost two adults and a child because it was a dad and an uncle trying to rescue the child. All three of them, unfortunately, passed away.
I know, especially when it's family, you want to get in there, you want to save your loved one, but it's so important that you remember your role is to get the people who have the equipment to provide the proper help to get the person out. That's one thing. Another one is having some lockout takeout system.
Making sure any and all equipment in and around the bin is turned off. That's very simple. If you have a bin or something that empties from the bottom or there's a grain vacuum in there, it's really easy to get pulled into the funnel of grain. We know grain is slippery, so it's hard to get yourself out. You have nothing to grip onto. Those are the safety practices.
Then when we're talking equipment, always a harness. I also advise people, make sure you do have your cell phone so that if you are able to make a call, that's useful. Of course, the person outside the bin should be there too and able to make a call, but you never know. A properly attached harness, having it, again, properly attached to your body, but then also to its anchor point outside the bin as well.
Then two, keep in mind that there are respiratory issues, auditory issues, so hearing protection, a respirator or some sort of face covering if you need it. Just some filter because another hazard of grain bins is grain dust explosions. I mean, those are usually fatal, so it's important that we're, again, in management, preventing from that too, but just knowing that that dust is present, it's important to make sure that we have all of the right PPE on for that.
Joe: One of the things that I see with upright grain bins or silos is that sometimes people retrofit them a little bit and try to take these old structures and make them a little safer. Is that something you recommend? Are there certain things that you think of right away that you should add to an old upright if you're still going to use it?
Emily: Yes, absolutely. Stairs, if you can. If there is a ladder, a cage that goes all the way down the length of the ladder. I know our silo on my home farm from growing up, there was a cage, but only at the very top of the silo. You were free climbing for a lot of it, and I couldn't even guess off the top of my head, but it was a pretty tall silo. If you fell, it was going to be bad. Anything like that that's really external to the structure is a retrofit that you can make.
Another big thing, like I said, it's about grain quality, and a lot of the time people are going to check the quality. There are all sorts of gauges and meters and other cool gadgets now that allow you to check those things from outside of the bin. For me, any equipment that is going to make you moving around the outside of the bin safer, anything that's going to prevent you from going into the bin is a good idea. Those are the main things.
Joe: Well, it's good that you can put a sensor in a grain bin too. It's not just cows that you can do that with.
Emily: Oh, yes. You can put a sensor in anything these days.
Joe: One of the things that I think about all the time is, if people move away from an upright, now what? Maybe this is more of a question for Brad as well, but what do you do with it? It's just sitting there now empty. You feel bad that it's doing nothing for you, but it's taking up space, so what next?
Bradley: There's a lot of things that you can do. If you think about it from a silage standpoint, you can put it in bags. You got all that plastic and that's a whole another discussion for another day, but they're a lot easier to manage, granted you need to have new bagging equipment, or you can just make a pile and cover it. That can happen too. We do both at our research center, we bag stuff and we pile it. You think about it, people put corn in an upright as well. You can put that in a bag too. Those are the two popular ones. We can think about lots of other things too.
Emily: Joe, did you mean what do you do with the structure after you're done using it?
Joe: What do you do with the silo? That's what I'm saying. What do you do with the upright?
Emily: Bradley, you dummy.
[laughter]
Joe: No, that's a good question too. It's important to know what are your other options.
Bradley: You just leave it there. You leave it there. It's a tombstone on the prairie.
Joe: That's what I'm getting at. There's got to be something you can do with it. I've seen some people take them down, which we should probably talk about that for safety.
Emily: That's what I was going to say. A lot of these structures, and I think of, we all know the old gray silos, and they're built out of these blocks. Over time, if you just let it sit, they start to wear down, there's cracks. There is a risk of collapse. I think we've all seen videos of that happening on social media. I know even sometimes when you bring a crew in to have them taken down, that can happen.
I do think that you have to judge the condition of the structure. Obviously, there is cost associated with needing to take it down, but from a safety standpoint, that's the way to go, I think. Also, from a pest management standpoint, if you just have this big empty structure, probably with a little bit of feed left in it, if you want to have a raccoon hotel, you totally can, but if you don't, you might want to think about taking it down.
I know on our home farm growing up, we had a couple of silos that we took down and just had the big concrete slab up still and that was fine, they're about two, three feet tall, good for lumber storage. The main options are leave it or take it down. Like I said, you have to be a judge of what the structural soundness is of these pieces. If they can stay up a little longer, fine, and if not, definitely take them down because imagine, are you going to spend more money taking it down or spend more money if it collapses and crushes your barn or your house?
Joe: I totally agree, and I wish there was another use for them but there just isn't. Well, let's talk about bunkers instead for a little bit. We've got upright safety. Walk me through all the things you need to watch for when it comes to making a pile or making a bunker.
Emily: Well, you already hit on a big one at the beginning, and that is face management. You are not facing your piles properly. They are an avalanche risk. You may think, "Oh, it's no big deal, it's just a silage pile," but on some of these farms, you get up to those piles, those faces, they're tall. If that collapses onto you, it can bury you. That's a big one. With that, outside of the face management, just general management, making sure when you're filling the bunker, it's being packed properly in order to prevent molding and other issues from coming up because again, too, that's also your feed. It's about your bottom line too in preserving some of this.
The big things are proper packing, and then just proper management as you go. Don't take off more than you need at a time. Don't leave random piles in the bunker. Make sure you're only taking off the plastic as you need it because, again, just like with grain, you need to be properly managing this crop and this feedstuff, and that is going to play a role again in having viable feed for your cattle and also preventing anything from going wrong.
Bradley: One thing I would like to say, I think, don't be afraid to get a silo dealer or equipment or people like that out to inspect your bunker. We did that last year because we thought, well, one of our slabs on our bunker fell over, just fell over and it happens, it's 30-some years old. We had to have somebody out and inspect it just to make sure the bunker was still sound, and it is. For some reason, the glue or all that just gave up so we repaired that portion.
Don't be afraid if you haven't had somebody out to look at your bunker silo once. Just do it to see if it's sound. I know it's tough because we were all like, "Well, what are we going to do if we don't have that bunker anymore?" We had to make sure that it was sound and it worked because that slab could have just fallen on the TMR mixer, the tractor. You just never know when you're going through there.
Emily: An employee, yes.
Bradley: Right, an employee.
Emily: That's a really good point, Bradley, that I missed before. That goes for anything, so upright silos, grain bins, once they hit that 10 to 15-year-old mark, you should be getting them inspected on a somewhat regular basis every few years just to check for structural soundness. They can also check there, is there leaks, is there cracks because that doesn't only impact the structure but also can impact the quality of the feed that's in there. If there's a lot of cracks and you get a heavy rain event, then you're getting more overly wet feed, spoiled feed, moldy feed, et cetera. Really excellent point, Bradley.
Joe: The last thing that we mentioned already that we need to talk about is manure storage. You briefly mentioned it, but again, let's just quickly walk through the biggest concerns. What are some of those prevention-type things that we can do so that we can stay as safe as possible?
Emily: Well, once again, like with any of this, and our favorite theme here on The Moos Room is management. If you are properly managing your pits and lagoons, you shouldn't have any problems. The biggest concern with manure always is gas. A lot of people that can get trapped in manure storage facilities, they usually end up dying of gas poisoning, asphyxiation, those types of things.
It is so, so critical that if you do need to enter the manure pit, that you're being very mindful of the gas levels, of what your PPE is, is there somebody else out there? Again, just like with the grain bin things, there are all sorts of sensors you can put in it to be checking the gas levels so that if you do need to go in and make a repair or check something, you'll know if it's too high, unsafe, or too low.
I also really want people to exercise caution around lagoons and outdoor pits. I think we think a lot about the pits that are under the barn, all of those, but people have died from agitating manure in outdoor pits simply because if we're having a thermal inversion, like when you see fog and stuff, that air us not dissipating properly. I know that there was a farmer in Wisconsin a few years back that he was agitating the pit and his family couldn't find him for hours, and they found him laying next to the tractor. There was a pent of steers right near that pit as well, and all the steers also died of gas poisoning.
It is a thing where with that, being super mindful of the weather and what's going on with that. We want to make sure that that air can dissipate and that it's not just sitting at the surface when we're agitating the pit. A lot of that has to do with the time of day as well because it's more common to have that thermal version in the morning.
Keeping those things in mind, it's basic, basic stuff, but like I say, with anything with farm safety, it's always good to get another reminder. I think for any of these situations, just getting a sensor to know what your gas levels are. There you go, Bradley, there's your sensor plug.
Joe: Sensors for gas, and then just physically being entrapped as well is another big piece of this. I've been around some very outdated and some very, very, very scary pits, and how deep they are. You might see 14, 15 feet deep and not a whole lot of railing around the outside. Watching where you're walking, knowing where everything is, not trying to save animals that may or may not get in those areas, and doing all that safely is all a big concern as well.
Emily: One more thing I would mention on that is, I do know some farms that, specifically dairy farms, they may be reclaimed sand or doing something like that where they will actually have people on equipment, skid loader or something like that in the shallow part of the pit moving around manure, getting some of that sand back. I know of a couple of different farms that have had people die because also some equipment and tractor safety pieces. They were not operating the equipment in a safe way, and they tipped over, and then they're trapped in a tractor, in a piece of equipment in this big pit of manure.
That is another thing just to keep in mind too. That is not as common of an accident or concern, but again, I've heard of it happening more than once.
Joe: That's real. The guys that are operating that equipment are so good at operating that equipment. There tends to be sometimes some complacency, and it's amazing how fast they move in those situations to get things done. Yes, I could see it happening very quickly.
Emily: Absolutely, and that's on anything with farm safety. You're right on, Joe. Complacency is what kills. I don't care if it's your millionth time doing it, it only takes one time. Constant vigilance is going to be key.
All right, I think we're going to wrap it there. We'll go through a couple of plugs here really quick. Don't forget, you can find us on Twitter @UMNmoosroom, @UMNFarmSafety. If you're interested in more information about grain bin safety and other farm safety topics, you can visit extension.umn.edu/farmsafety. You can also visit, umash, that's U-M-A-S-H.umn.edu, the Upper Midwest Ag Safety and Health Center, they have a lot of great information as well. I think we're just going to leave the plugs there. Keep it nice and simple.
No, wait. I'm also going to plug my YouTube channel, UM Extension Farm Safety and Health, and there's also a UM Extension Theory and Beef YouTube channel as well that you can check out.
Joe: And if you have comments,-
Emily: Oh, my gosh.
Joe: -questions, scathing rebuttals-
Emily: Oh, no. I messed it up.
Joe Armstrong: -you can send them to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Emily: You got it, Brad, spell it out.
Bradley: T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M. I think I got it.
Joe: Yes.
Emily: You did. Finish it.
Bradley: @umn.edu.
Emily: All right. Just in case you missed that, you can email questions, comments, and scathing rebuttals to themoossroom@umn.edu, T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu. Thanks, everybody, for listening. We will check in with you next week.
Joe: Bye.
Emily: Bye. We should just do a podcast about stubborn German farmers. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and if it is broke, don't fix it.
[cow moos]
[00:24:20] [END OF AUDIO]
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