building a barn from scratch(here's a drawing what do you think?)

[lorihadams]

Okay, eventually we are going to build a barn. We want to include a milking parlor for our goats, a suitable area with a pop door to the outside for the chickens, feed storage room, hay loft storage, kidding stalls, and a general loafing area for the goats with an open door to the pasture at all times. We are thinking of putting the chicken coop in the back corner with the pop door access under the lean to with access to the pasture as well with the goats. Right now we have 4 goats but will eventually have more....they're like potatoe chips you know.

So, if we were to have say, 20-30 nigerian dwarf goats and 20-30 standard breed chickens what are the dimensions for everything under one roof. We want to have water and electric and will probably have a concrete floor. We only want to do this once so we want to do it right.

Any suggestions? Links to suitable floor plans would be wonderful if you have them.....thanks!

 

[ducks4you]

I would check with the AG departments at Universities in Virginia about plans. Many schools have plans and links free online. I applaud your decision to lay down cement. I use 1/2-3/4 inch 4x6 ft. rubber mats for my horses to help with fatigue, and mats can be an option in the future, should you need them. Cement is SO easy to clean. I have had 2 (very old) horses die in my barn, and I was able to clean up so much easier than if the floor had been dirt.

Feel free to call the schools, too, if you don't mind a Professor who might talk your hear off!! (I've had that happen, too, because we live near Champaign-Urbana, where the University of Illinois is. THEY are the largest land-owner in the county because of their Ag department, and they're very happy to give advice.)

Let me suggest as much wood as possible in your building. It's warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. If not, metal buildings can work in your climate. Where I live, metal buildings are cold and clammy in the winter, since we have so much humidity all year.

Consider storing bedding above living areas. It's a real space saver, and your bedding never gets wet in a loft. MY loft stores 11 bales high at the apex of the roof, is u-shaped and approximately 900 sq/ ft. on the floor. I can store about 500 bales of hay and/or straw or shavings in my loft, so I can buy once a year for my winter needs. (My horses have several acres to graze on during the warm months.)

 

[big brown horse]

Oh, D4you, I am suffering from barn envy. Yours sounds wonderful!

 

[ducks4you]

I do really love my barn, BBH. We found/bid on our property in September, 1999. I discovered it the day it went on the market, BUT, I had been looking for it for 12 years. It really helped me to see a LOT of stables, and small horse properties, so I would have a good idea about where to spend my money. For instance, I would LOVE to win a lottery and put in a riding arena. I have the space for it!! But, it will be more feasable to expand my barn West, and add 4 more stalls, FIRST. And, after horse-shopping in 10 degree weather, and Riding in a beautiful BUT metal indoor arena last week, it's a reminder that you aren't much warmer in a metal building than you are outside in the wind. EVERY show horse I saw was blanketed to the hilt!! (Beautiful arena, however...sigh...) That evening, I put my horses in from their turnout in my WOODEN barn and it was 15 degrees warmer in there than outside. The chickens didn't have have totally frozen water--this is normal, and no I don't believe in a waterer deicer. I also went horse-shopping at a place with a very small metal barn, where they had built stalls with a hay loft above. It was significantly warmer in those stalls with the hay and wood to insulate. BTW, I have NEVER had a problem with dust making my horses inside the barn cough. I think if you have a lot of mold in your hay it can create breathing problems, but if I was on MythBusters, I would question the reasoning that above stall storage was unhealthy.

Just food-for-thought for barn-builders!!

(Oh, I DID find one horse that I'm going back to buy later this month--it was a 3 hour drive, one way, you see. He's a 16'2hh TANK of a Standardbred, been handled-to-death, VERY affectionate, and needs to do a job, which is teaching ME to drive.)

 

[Wolf-Kim]

Another helpful thing about storing hay/bedding in the loft of the barn is added insulation. Heat rises, and pile a bunch of hay in the top of the barn, those animals will be nice and toasty through winter!

I've already told Adam that I want a loft on my future barn.

 

[shadowrider]

Just a thought: If you have a hill, a bank barn for access to the upper level might be nice. Google for pics of those.
shadowrider

 

[patandchickens]

I'm going to be the contrary opinion here -- I think you should think long and hard before building a hayloft, because in most cases they are *not* the best idea IMHO.

First, they are expensive, sometimes more expensive than just building an equal area of ground-level hay storage.

Second, they are not very useful for anything *but* hay or straw, whereas a normal building (or part thereof) that you store hay/straw in can in the future be subdivided or repurposed for all sorts of things, animal housing, machinery, storage, whatever.

Third, unless you can afford to make a proper bank barn (and few can, these days) you will find it a LOT of work to load all that hay/straw up there, even if you purchase a mechanized hay elevator. And of course you have to climb up there (I highly recommend building stairs not just a ladder, *way* handy when you have a broken leg or bad back or are pregnant or such, and usually hard to retrofit) every darn time you want to chuck down hay

Fourth, committing to loft storage of hay/straw normally commits you to using only small square bales (unless you are talking about building a large and VERY stoutly-engineered bank barn, but it doesn't sound like you are)... sometimes large round or large square bales are cheaper, or more available, or more handy, but they pretty much require ground-level storage space.

Fifth, lofts do most often make the animal level of the barn dusty (when they're not, it's because all openings are kept closed all the time) and are unquestionably more dangerous from a fire-hazard standpoint, it being much less likely to evacuate animals or etc from a building with a fire *atop* it than in a building *next to* it. Some insurance companies will also charge a higher premium if bedding is stored in a loft as opposed to a separate building or wing of same building.

And finally, there are WAY cheaper and easier ways to insulate a barn ceiling if that's what you want

The chief virtue of a loft barn is in two circumstances: a) if your local zoning or tax structure makes it impossible or punitively-taxed to build more ground level square footage, which is not true *most* places but is true *some* places; or b) if you are running an operation with a very large number of horses (possibly other stock, either, I know more about horse operations though) AND have few or no employees, as being able to toss hay or even in some cases straw bedding down through individual stall holes is faster than wheelbarrowing it from a single location that is far from some of the stalls.

In pretty much all other cases (living on a river floodplain *possibly maybe* being the only exception I can think of), IMHO it really makes more sense to build ground-level hay/straw storage, as a wing of the building you're planning or even in some cases as a separate building.

Pat, having worked at really quite a lot of barns over the years and has made somewhat of a personal study of what works more and less well.

 

[kcsunshine]

But Pat, you forget how much fun it was to play in the hay loft, laying around on those bales, dreaming about your life in the good land (OHFG).

 

[ducks4you]

My experience is that my barn is NOT any dustier with 400 bales of hay/straw in my loft. I am prone to bronchitis. NONE of my horses or me have been coughing in my barn in the past 10 years I have had my horses there.

Cost can be a big factor when considering a loft or second story. MY barn is 50+ years old, and the loft came with it. I see no reason to change this. UNFORTUNATELY, steel buildings are much more affordable than building wooden, AND they seem to last F O R E V E R!! But, if it's as "cold as an icebox"--not my words, but the language used by the woman whose 20 stall barn/indoor arena I visited last week--it makes you wonder if your animals are even comfortable in it. A couple of weeks ago I saw a nice setup in a small metal building where the owners had built a loft which was on top of the 4 stalls, and stored hay/straw there. It was SIGNIFICANTLY warmer in that building than a similar one I was in recently, where they stalled with round pen fencing, open on top.
I URGE you to visit LOTS of local stables and ask lots of questions. I get great ideas when I see how somebody else has solved problems.

And, Pat, you gotta have the equipment to MOVE those big bales. They are very heavy and many people have gotten hurt handling them. Not as easy to get hurt handling 40-75 pound rectangular bales. Myself, I LOVE to stack hay on my truck and put it into my loft (which has a door 9 ft. from the ground), and stack it myself. I leave a aisle 5 bales high to my door to the catwalk, which I use to fill the manger in the adjacent shelter.

I'm not trying to convince anybody to do it the way that I do. Your livestock-owning neighbors are more aware of particulars that are unique than I am aware of. I know that they can tell you what they like, and also what they would change if they could, and YOU can benefit from their advice.

 

[ksalvagno]

I have an open middle in my barn and then both sides are a hay loft with regular steps to get up to them. Hay wagons can just be brought right into the barn and it is fairly easy to get the hay stacked in the hay lofts. When I throw down the hay, I can throw it down where I need it and don't have to go far to put it in the animal's area.

I have a metal barn but we do have wood on the inside. May not be as warm as a wood barn but we went with what we could afford. There are ways to make a metal barn comfortable for your animals. My animals do just fine in the winter. We also don't have the land or equipment to get round bales so we need the smaller square bales. I need them stored off the ground because our land will flood if we get bad rain.

I would say build the barn as large as you can afford. It seems very easy to outgrow your barn.

Look at a lot of different setups but you also have to consider what you can physically do and of course you have to consider how much space you have available and what equipment you have available or can afford to buy.