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Jay NE Ohio

Posted 2/25/2009 15:53 (#622548)
Subject: Dairy heifer barn: pictures, ideas or plans?

northeastern Ohio

We have expanded our herd and now need more room for the calves. Baby calves are raised in hutches to 10 weeks. I need a facility that will handle 100 calves that will range in age of 10 weeks to 1 year. Probably 10 calves per pen to start and then go to 20 calves per pen by 1 year.

I will post a picture of my neighbors barns below. I like the idea of a drive by barn like these. A drive through barn might be better to protect the feed from the weather, but would probably also increase the cost considerably.

Show me what you have done and tell me what you wish you had done differently.

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silagehauler

Posted 2/25/2009 22:05 (#623024 - in reply to #622548)
Subject: Re: Dairy heifer barn: pictures, ideas or plans?

Can you get a closer shot of the neck rail and shoulder bars? I would like to build an apron to feed beef cows and feeder cattle on. Was thinking of using something very similar to what in the pictures.

J. Sheehan

Posted 2/25/2009 22:14 (#623041 - in reply to #622548)
Subject: RE: Dairy heifer barn: pictures, ideas or plans?

Sunnyside, WA

Here's a picture of our weaning shed. It is for calves from 8 weeks to 4 months old, then they are moved to open lots. Building is 80' wide, but it could be done as a half building. We wanted 16 pens, so it was cheaper to build head to head feeding. Pens are 10' wide by 30' deep. 18' center feed alley. 10' concrete feed alley for the front gate, 3' concrete sloped to the manure alley for the water, and 17' of dirt pack for bedding. Building is a little tall, but it can all be cleaned by loaders and bedded with a tractor and straw spreader. Feeding is done with our tmr mixer and feed pushed up throughout the day. I built it with very little manual labor involved.

Calves are weaned into groups of 8, then gates can be opened to makes groups of 24 after a few weeks. all dehorning and bangs vaccinations are done in these pens.

Headlocks through the whole barn, but we have since taken a few pens of the lockups out for the first couple weeks after weaning. 8 stanchions in 10'. Good size until 4-5 months, then need 7 stanchions in 10' until about 7-8 months. 6 stanchions in 10' are good to almost 14-15 months. I like headlocks and our calves are in pens with them from a few weeks after they are weaned until they leave the farm.

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Jay NE Ohio

Posted 2/26/2009 08:30 (#623457 - in reply to #623041)
Subject: Re: Dairy heifer barn: pictures, ideas or plans?

northeastern Ohio

It looks nice Jason! Calves look healthy and clean! The only question I have is about rain and snow: Do you guys get much? I will probably go with a curtain sided building to keep the rain and snow out. I might build a "half" building with the open half to the east. Then I could add the other half when we need to expand again.

It looks like you bed with straw. I also use straw, but was thinking about just bedding the back half of each pen. I have a manure lagoon that I could scrape the feed alley into each day, but I don't want to get any straw into it. I don't see any place to scrape yours into, so I assume that you clean the whole thing out at once. How often do you clean it out?

Thanks for the pictures!

J. Sheehan

Posted 2/27/2009 00:16 (#624574 - in reply to #623457)
Subject: Re: Dairy heifer barn: pictures, ideas or plans?

Sunnyside, WA

We don't get much rain or snow here. 6 to 9" per year total precipitation and that is the reason almost 2/3 of our milking cows are in open lots. The straw stack to the right in the picture (north) is my version of a windbreak for the winter. We use straw for bedding both this shed and the hutches, as well as special needs barns for the milk cows. All open lots are bedded with straw in the winter.

For this age, we only scrape the manure alley 2-3 times per week, usually M-W-F. Very little straw gets in it from the bedded pack. The bedded pack area gets new straw as needed, usually 2-3 times per week also. We clean the bedded pack the first week of every month. Tried longer, but the gates get tough to open. Takes two men with a payloader and skidloader about 1 1/2 hours to push out. I should have lowered the dirt in the bedded pack area about 6-8" so I had a curb from the water trough slab to keep the straw back and the cleaning would be even faster.

Probably overkill, but the system works very well for us and the help like it. We've only raised our own calves for the last four years, so this was a huge investment. But our heifers calving in are doing so well that we like the results of the hutches and weaning shed.

I can get closer pictures if you would like. E-mail in the profile works if that is easier.

Ken cen-pa

Posted 2/25/2009 23:24 (#623174 - in reply to #622548)
Subject: Re: Dairy heifer barn: pictures, ideas or plans?

cental pa along the Susquehanna River

Jay I like the barn in the picture the only thing is I would put the feed alley in the barn. What I mean is close your building completely with bird wire so no birds get in your building to your heifers or in the feed. Or maybe you all don't have bird problems out your way ? When we were looking at barns before we built ours we went to farms and their buildings were just full of starlings and that is when I decided I did not want something that the birds could come into.

Brian sepa

Posted 2/26/2009 08:41 (#623470 - in reply to #622548)
Subject: RE: Dairy heifer barn: pictures, ideas or plans?

Lancaster County, Pa.

If I were building a heifer barn I would look seriously at a Cover-All or similar structure. I visited a farm a few years back that was using one of these for heifers. We were there on a dreary day and I was amazed at how light it was inside. This fellow was in the heifer raising business and when we were there he was building his second Cover-All.

rodave

Posted 2/26/2009 11:49 (#623697 - in reply to #622548)
Subject: RE: Dairy heifer barn: pictures, ideas or plans?

I like the barns in the pics, I wish I built something along those lines, the one thing I would do different though is to have more of a roof over the feed area. My heifer barn has only a roof over the bedding pack, which is fine but the feeding area is open and while its fine on nice days its not so pleasant otherwise. One of these days I am going to make some changes, bring a roof out over the open are and ver top the feed pad. I am not sure about closing it all in, maybe some turkey curtains. I saw on a visit to another dairy they had built some new banrs and put chicken wire over the rafters to keep birds from perching. Seemed like a good idea to keep birds from being a problem.
How do you find raising calves in hutches? I keep mine in pens in an old bank barn thats been remodelled. It works well, but its a lot of work cleaning the pens with a pitch fork into a gutter. One thing I really wonder is how do the calves do when its really cold outside? It can get pretty cold around here sometimes.

Jay NE Ohio

Posted 2/26/2009 12:35 (#623740 - in reply to #623697)
Subject: Re: Dairy heifer barn: pictures, ideas or plans?

northeastern Ohio

I like my neighbors design too, except for the feed area being open to the elements. His is open to the east, as mine would be too, and that helps. But there are probably 20 days a year when I get an east wind with rain. Feed is never cheap, and I want them eating EVERY day.

I had the exact same setup that you do before I went to hutches. It was a 63 cow tie stall barn up until 1988. We then converted 30 stalls into calf pens. Pitched the manure by hand into the gutter. It was a nice setup, except for the manure handling. The biggest problem was calf mortality was averaging 7%, which is way too high. Air quality was poor and growth rate was not ideal. We moved to hutches in January 2004 and mortality went to 1%.

The calves seem to do ok in the cold. I have a few (3 our of 200 head) with smaller ears due to minor frost bite on the coldest days. We bump up the milk replacer on cold days to provide more energy.

Jason in MI

Posted 2/26/2009 22:02 (#624382 - in reply to #622548)
Subject: RE: Dairy heifer barn: pictures, ideas or plans?

Adrian MI

We have a variety of barns for heifers, they all have their postives and negatives. We have perfected them every time we build another one. They all have a 10 or 12 ft scrape alley and a 25-30 ft bedded area with a fence between them.
Coverall type barns are light, airy, and have lots of ventilation. The way we built ours we feed on the outside wall, so when it snows and rains, the feed doesn't keep very well. We also have a hard time getting it closed up in the winter, so we keep pregnant heifers in them now instead of younger ones.
Drive by barns are nice as the feed stays dry from rain, but the snow still blows into it if its blowing the wrong way. We have one barn facing east and one facing south and some days the wind ends up blowing in the open side, but they can be reasonably built money wise.
Drive through barns keep all the rain and snow out and stay pretty warm during the coldest days. They cost a litte more to build, but you can share a common feed alley and manure storage.
We started a new barn last fall exactly like your neighbors, we got everything done, but the cement. Its a 40x288 barn open to the south, with a 6 ft overhang over the feed alley. It has 17 pens for 3-6 month olds, we put about 20 heifers per pen.

Jason

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EO dan

Posted 2/27/2009 19:23 (#625466 - in reply to #624382)
Subject: Re: Dairy heifer barn: pictures, ideas or plans?

cobden, ontario

those are really nice barns!

Ken cen-pa

Posted 2/27/2009 22:12 (#625713 - in reply to #624382)
Subject: Re: Dairy heifer barn: pictures, ideas or plans?

cental pa along the Susquehanna River

Jason do you custom raise heifers or are they all your own ? Nice barns and animals.

Jason in MI

Posted 2/28/2009 13:09 (#626345 - in reply to #625713)
Subject: Custom raised

Adrian MI

Thanks for the comments. Right now we have around 3100 heifers on hand, all custom raised for five different dairy farms. The barns econmically built, but they work good for us and what we need.

Jason

Russ In Idaho

Posted 2/26/2009 22:05 (#624390 - in reply to #622548)
Subject: RE: Dairy heifer barn: pictures, ideas or plans?

I would love to some of the barns you guys have. I glad I don't have to deal with the weather you do.

BCFENCE

Posted 2/28/2009 07:55 (#626035 - in reply to #624390)
Subject: Re: Dairy heifer barn: pictures, ideas or plans?

Jason you need to be proud, That is one nice looking operation . Thanks for the pics.
THOMAS

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