Where we heard it

One of our ranching friends in DeWitt County pulled us aside at a coffee shop in Cuero last week. He had just finished his spring manure pit routine — the one he does every year the week before he opens the pit up for the season — and he said he had been meaning to share the story because he thinks most ranchers don't take pits as seriously as they should.

He said his dad nearly lost a hand helping a neighbor in '87 pulling a calf out of a pit. The story is a long one and we'll leave the names out of it. What he took from it was a rule: "Nobody opens a pit on my place without three things."

The three things

1. Wind direction first. Every spring, before he takes the seal off, he walks the pit with a piece of dry grass in his hand and watches which way it blows. He said the pit can hold a pocket of gas that's been building all winter, and the first thing that happens when you break the seal is that gas drifts — and it drifts with whatever wind there is. His rule: open the pit from the downwind side, let the drift go away from the barn and the cattle and the people. Never open it when the wind is dead still.

2. A gas meter on a stick. He bought a portable H2S meter about ten years ago — he said it was under $300 and has paid for itself every spring since — and he taped it to the end of a four-foot piece of PVC. He said the meter goes in the pit before his hands do. Every time. He said the point is not to know the exact ppm; the point is to know whether the meter screams when it gets to the bottom of the pit. If the meter screams, you walk away, close the barn door, and come back in an hour.

3. Never alone. Rule three is simple: there is always somebody on the rim of the pit when he's anywhere near it, and they have a rope and a phone. He said his dad's story was what he remembered when he set this rule, and it is the one rule he's never broken since.

Why it matters in plain language

Hydrogen sulfide — the gas that comes off a manure pit — is heavier than air, so it pools at the bottom of low spaces like a pit. At low concentrations it smells like rotten eggs. At higher concentrations it doesn't smell like anything at all, because it paralyzes your sense of smell around 100 parts per million. He said that's the part that scares him: the moment you stop smelling it is the moment you need to be most worried, not least. At a few hundred ppm it will knock a person down in a minute or two. At 800 ppm and above, the AgriLife sheets he's read say a person can be gone before anybody can help. And pits build up over winter with the pit sealed.

He said he is not a doctor, not a safety specialist, and not a gas engineer. He is a rancher who has read the AgriLife extension fact sheet on manure pit safety more times than he can count and who has a dad who told him one story.

Who he would call if he wanted to learn more

  • Texas AgriLife Extension — the livestock and dairy safety fact sheets are public and cover manure pit hazards specifically. He said the DeWitt County extension office will mail you a paper copy if you ask.
  • His vet — the same vet he calls for anything cow-related will at least know who to point him at if somebody goes down near a pit.
  • OSHA confined-space publications — he said he is not in an OSHA-regulated operation but the confined space documents are free and useful, and the rules of physics are the same whether you have employees or not.

What we are still watching

  • We are asking AgriLife for the current gas-meter recommendations — specifically, which low-cost portable H2S meters they think are worth what you pay for them. When we have a clean answer, we'll share it.
  • We are hearing other ranchers in the Network talk about their pit routines; if we hear a different approach, we'll pass it on.
  • If any ag safety specialist or extension agent wants to correct or add to any of this, we want to hear from you. We will post it.

One simple thing you can do this week

If your operation has any kind of pit — manure pit, silage pit, seasonal pond with a low drain — take a minute this week to decide two things before spring work ramps up. One: which direction is the wind usually coming from when you work that part of the property? Two: who would be on the rim with you if you needed to go near it? Even if the answer to the second one is just "I'll call my neighbor first," knowing the answer ahead of time is better than figuring it out in the moment.

That is the whole thing.

Holler if...

You have got a pit routine that has kept you safe, we want to hear it. You can share it through the Network the way you would like — attributed to your county or kept fully private — just holler and we will figure it out.

We will keep listening. Come home safe.