We are finally getting a barn!!!

[thebirdguy]

I am planning a barn for our 10 acres... It will house our heritage pigs, chickens, turkeys and goats during the winter primarily..

I am debating on what style barn to build and what to use for a floor..

What have you used and what would you suggest??

THANKS!!!

 

[DonnaBelle]

Most barns have dirt floors. Bedding is added, depending on what type of animal you have. Don't build it in a low area or one that doesn't drain. We have brought in dirt to make sure the barn doesn't hold water. Standing water is bad for any kind of animal. Dirt can be sweetened with lime when you clean it out...

You are probably going to devote different areas/sections of the barns to different animals. There are websites that you can look at barn plans/layouts for free. Google it...

Whatever you build, it won't be big enough, so plan what you can afford now, (unless you have unlimited funds) and make it so you can add on later.

We built our goat barn and have already added on twice. Plus we built a second barn for the bucks.

Research feeders, what type??? Also, can you get water and electric to the barn, if you can, do so for sure. It's no fun hauling water. Or trying to see in the dark or by a lantern. Remember what happened to Mrs. O'leary??

Do your research.

DonnaBelle

 

[thebirdguy]

I am planning on approximately 36' x 60'.. Pigs and goat stalls down one side and birds on the other.. More than I can really afford right now.. getting bids so we'll see. I'd rather stretch a little now than be too small in 3 months.. LOL

I'm debating on dirt floors throughout, dirt everywhere but a cement walkway between the two sides and a rough finish cement floor throughout.. still weighing pros and cons of each.. Opinions?

 

[redtailgal]

x

 

[DonnaBelle]

I agree. Maybe a cement center aisle, but stalls, pens, etc. should be dirt. You can always sprinkle it with lime to sweeten it. Plus you can add more dirt to the barn later if it gets worn down.

I use stall dry on urine spots and I have 17 goats penned in the barn at night. No problems with odor.

We have cement in our milking room, that's it.

DonnaBelle

 

[goodhors]

We have a traditional pole barn, center 12' aisle, with horse stalls on each side, sliding doors at each end of aisle. Center doors open 12' wide and high, for good air flow, allows us to drive trucks inside for hay unloading, manure spreader thru for cleaning stalls so I don't have to wheel it out, vet to park inside for working on the animals. You are planning smaller animals and birds, but you still will need feed and bedding unloaded, so doing an "aisle to hay pile or grain room", is MUCH shorter to carry things than parking outside, walking in thru people doors. When you do clean stalls or pens, being able to drive thru barn with a spreader, trailer or truck for major cleaning, refilling bedding, is a lot easier than small wheelbarrows full.

Put a flag outside in new barn location and take notes DAILY over several months and seasons. Learn your weather patterns and prevailing wind directions. You want to build doors to face the wind, catch cooling breezes so inside barn is not hot in summer. Our long North side faces our woodlot for a windbreak, lessens snow piling up by the doors during the worst winter storms. We really don't get much daily prevailing wind locally from our North, so long side is helpful there. Our prevailing wind is from the South during winter, blows all the time, while in warmer seasons the wind is mostly from the West. Our doors face East and West, so barn has a breeze going in from April thru Oct to keep it cool and fresh. At my mother's house the wind is always from the North in winter, west wind in summer, so that would be where you want your doors facing for summer cooling breezes. So your local area may be special with local wind changes and you need to plan for it in placement of the barn doors, barn direction for comfort of the animals during various seasons. You probably won't need mechanical cooling devices like fans (that cost electricity and possible fire issues) when real heat happens.

You want good air exchange using the prevailing wind without drafts in winter. Cold itself or cold STILL air is not usually the problem, it is stale air, ammonia from urine that causes pnuemonia in animals, other illnesses. Drafty barn doesn't help the animals stay healthy either, but roof vents allow a good air exchange without drafts, to keep smells down if you need to keep the big doors shut with cold. I never want to smell ammonia when I enter a barn, and our barn does not smell, ever. Animals except newborns, will develop enough coat to stay warm in their local cold if they are not in drafty places and they have fresh air so they stay healthy.

A couple things we did building our barn were suggestions from brother-in-law the barn builder. Get your dirt base established as soon as possible. Know how much you will need to raise the level of the barn above the surrounding area, to keep it higher than any possible flooding ever goes. We raised our barn level about 5ft, took a LOT of dirt, but that has prevented the barn ever flooding, even with "100 year flood levels" we got in the last couple years. Records of the past were all smashed with quantity of water recorded recently, so the dirt base paid off BIG time by preventing water in the barn. Everything around the barn is downhill, so all drainage is away, helpful to staying dry.

We knew we were going to build the barn, so husband would order a truckload of dirt every time we got some money ahead. The dirt pile was huge by summer's end, when he had a dozer come level it, put all the dirt together. The rain, snow, freezing weather worked on the pile all winter and into summer, removing air, settling the dirt for building time. Dirt was pretty firmly packed, so there was very little settling or movement after getting up the poles, roof and walls of the barn up. BIL then recommended we continue wetting the inside dirt down about every other week for a month or two, which would continue settling the dirt under cover. We did that, put a few little things under cover in new barn, but didn't really do anything else for about 6 months. With winter slack time in work, husband built horse stalls, tack room, inside the barn. They poured a rough finish center aisle floor, and floors beyond the stalls for hay storage in spring. We had added about 20ft in length beyond what we thought we needed because BIL said barn was too small for our plans. Husband excavated some dirt out of stalls to lower floors, and brought in crushed limestone in various sizes to fill the stall floors back to aisle height. He rented a power tamper to compact the stone floors, pack them in hard so horse weight above would not move anything. Knowing more NOW, we would use geotextile fabric on the dirt base, and a layer of the geotextile fabric between each stone layer to prevent mixing the sizes of stones. Didn't have geotextile fabrics then. I definately recommend them, keeps everything in place to do a better job for you over time. Then when he finished compacting, we put rubber mats on packed stone for the floor that horses stand on.

The coarse stone below allows good drainage of urine, while rubber mats as toppers are softer to lay on, do not conduct heat away from animals laying down, and rubber mats are EASY to clean fast and get VERY clean for rebedding down. Dirt floors freeze, can be a PITA to get frozen bedding off of with ANY tool, do NOT stay level with using dirt. Maybe you don't have freezing, but dirt is just very hard to deal with in the cold places over winters. We clean stalls daily, I want dry, non poopy bedding for horses to lay in. Dry powdery poop comes up in the air as animals move around on it, poop/bedding crushes into layers as dirt. Poop dust from any species is not something that is good for horse lungs, other animals, birds or YOUR lungs to breathe in. I am not a fan of deep bedding for many reasons, with cleanliness being up top. Animals laying on the ever deepening layers, especially baby animals that might be born in it, are just exposed to too much sickness and health issues to suit me. I feel they stay equally warm on new, dry bedding after stalls or pens are cleaned each day. Daily cleaning means less volume bedding and poop to move for cleaning, than doing massive stall and pen cleaning in spring or whenever your scheduled cleaning time is. Digging out INCHES or a foot or more of dirty bedding is work, and way more than I want to deal with. A muck tub daily each stall or less, from calf stalls, horse stall keeps them easy to deal with, quickly done.

You may want to do a paper layout of the barn dimensions, post locations. Then cut out the stall sizes, pen sizes, lay then inside the barn to see how they fit. You can move them about to check out fit, with proposed outside door locations, feed storage room, work areas. Sure easy to do as paper than actually moving pen walls or cages in the barn! We did several layouts, argued out our reasons for choices, to come up with the final plan. Final plan has been excellent over the years. We have changed two of the original box stalls, 12'x24' space into 4 tie stalls when we purchased more horses. Husband used one sliding door, put in walls to make an enclosed, lockable, 8'x12' feed room with loft above that is very handy, beside the 2 box stalls we kept. Otherwise the layout has been adaptable with our changing wants over the years, easy to work in and use for a number of things we NEVER dreamed we would be doing when we built. During the year the open areas may be filled with winter hay or lamb pens when hay is gone, extra carriage for working horses. Tack room is wonderful for keeping horse equipment contained, with loft above adding extra storage for hay or straw. I would probably do the barn almost exactly the same if we would ever need to rebuild, with the change being to add 2ft to height, making trusses 14ft off the ground. Always cheaper to go up instead of out, and that 2ft higher would add an incredible amount of hay storage without having to pack quite as tight as we do now. Also easier to drive the semi truck inside with a taller load and not hit the lights!

Put all your wiring in metal conduits, with more circuts in the box than you think you will EVER need. Get good lights and plenty of them. Extra GFI outlets by doors, some outside the barn in case you need them later on. Get snappy covers for those outlets to protect them from animals and dirt. Switches for lights at EVERY door entrance. Plastic conduit for power wires is cheaper but does NOT holdup to rat chewing, you need metal.

Keep us posted on how your barn is shaping up as you go along!!

 

[SheepGirl]

I absolutely LOVE my neighbor's barn! I keep my sheep at my neighbor's house (with his sheep), but we will eventually be moving them to my house, so I'm planning for a new barn, too.

My neighbor's barn is about 30'x60'. He has six stalls on one side of the barn, all with cement floors. He primarily uses them for storage of random stuff. (The rest of the barn is dirt.) Only two of the pens (the only ones the sheep have access to) are bedded, and there's about a 3 inch layer of straw (though it's pretty compacted because we don't clean it out all that often). In addition to the main barn (it's made of cinder blocks), it's got two three sided shelters attached to it, both are about 72 feet long and about 30 feet wide.

The guy who owned the property before my neighbor was a cattle dealer, so in the main barn there is a working chute made for cattle in there, as well.

Here are some pictures (they are a couple years old and the barn has since been painted, so it looks much better than it did when these were taken):

Main barn with the side barn on the right.

This picture shows the side barn on the left.

This is a back view, you can see where the main barn and the right side barn attach and you can also see the left barn a bit. (That pasture with the three sheep in it is the ram pasture.)

I will take better photos if you want to see the inside of the barns to get some ideas.

 

[thebirdguy]

So it's finally happening!!! We are doing a 36 x 60 pole barn and can't wait for it to be finished!! Here's a picture of the progress so far...

 

[SheepGirl]

Congrats on starting your barn. I can't wait 'til I get mine!

 

[Ms. Research]

Congratulations on starting your Pole Barn. Please keep us posted on the progress. Looking forward to seeing the finished project.

K