What Could Be Simpler Than a Farm Building?

By Jim Rogerson of FarmPlus Buildings.

There’s nothing simpler than a farm building, yet why do the majority of people get this wrong? Sure farm buildings are simple, everyone can do a simple basic building, and we probably all can and do.

The biggest problem with getting a good job done comes down to a bit of time and money.

In this instance time should play the biggest role, because if you are controlling the job yourself then you probably aren’t paying yourself anyway. So if you spend extra time getting it right, it probably doesn’t cost you anything. Yet the benefits can be far reaching.

Simple mistakes can be made, especially late in the year:

“We are desperate to get some cows undercover”.

“I need the cheapest option to get some cattle off the land”.

“We have a gap here close to the house, its wasted space, we might as well use it for now, and we’ll use it as a garage/workshop later”.

Yet mostly, once cattle go into a building, it is very difficult to turn the building back to anything other than cattle housing.

Did you stop and think is it in the right place to get rid of all the muck?

Does the ground slope away from or to the house?

Water runs downhill naturally, so does dirty water and muck....

With this adage in mind and a bit of thought, a simple well designed farmyard will help to wash itself with every bit of rain. To put it simply, if you can keep the farmhouse and yard at the top end and direct all the muck to the low end, cleaning will be a lot simpler and life a lot more pleasant with a lot less ear-ache from the housekeeper!

Just because you wear wellington boots to walk through the cattle field and gateways, it doesn’t mean it’s alright to need them around the farmyard. When you are designing your building make sure you know what you really want and design it for the real use.

£2,000.00 goes nowhere with vets bills, antibiotics and loss of growth rate or even lost/dead animals. All too often these factors are just put down to a fact of life, especially on a farm, just by buying/using the cheapest options at the beginning. Very few open sided buildings work well for animal housing as far as ventilation and air exchange work and people say to me, “oh it will be alright with one side open”.

After buying a smoke machine some 5 years ago and testing buildings I can assure you they don’t work. They may work reasonably well on a cold, wet, windy day when all of us are glad of shelter but if you get a good spring day with the sun shining, with a bit of warmth in the building you will find there is probably no air movement at all and if there is any, it is going out through the back side of the building.

Animals need basic simple shelters:

• Shelter from the wind.

• Shelter from the rain.

• Shade from the sun.

• Plenty of fresh air movement above animal height.

Left alone in nature, animals will always find natural shelters, behind a wall, hedge, shelter belt, in a hollow, all with movement over the top of them so they always have fresh air to breathe in.

So the starting point for animal housing has to be shelter and air exchange.

Animals like having a wall to shelter behind but need plenty of air movement over the top of them.

All of us probably understand about trying to keep the prevailing wind and rain to the closed side of a building, yet we all fail to leave enough openings in the ridge to allow warm stale air to rise up naturally and exit the building as soon as possible.

I hear all too often that we need a big tall building with lots of air for all these animals. The basis of this is totally wrong. What is needed is a high rate of natural air exchange to keep your animals healthy, which overall will reduce vets visits and antibiotic use (possibly saving you thousands of pounds annually), all for a bit of time planning and no more expense than a couple of thousand upfront to begin with.

All too often I get told we have to put a fibre cement roof on livestock housing to stop the condensation, I put it to you that this idea has had a disastrous effect on animal health because it absorbs the condensation and hides any ventilation problems.

You only get condensation through a build-up of humidity and if this is happening there is a ventilation problem.

You have to do something to increase the air exchange.

A bigger volume of air won’t increase the air exchange it will probably only exasperate the problem.

Your starting point needs to be air exchange and getting the correct number of air exchanges per hour. This needs to happen every day of the year, not just on windy days. The cheapest solution is always the stack effect from warm air rising, and, in reality a lower ridge height will allow the air to leave the building quicker. In a tall building the warm air rises, cools and comes back down before reaching the ridge.

Fresh air is free, where else can you get free animal health.