Did someone mention "old time farmers"?
Open barns provide ventilation , closed barns do not do a very good job of geting rid of amonia from feces and urine causing many farm animal losses after weakened lungs of the new born animals get infected with diseases. Why do you think that barns in the US have spaces between the side barn boards ? This has been proved time and again in third world closed barn practices where the barns are quite solid and very common there by the Peace Corps folks. This fact has also been verified and confirmed by many scientific studies too.