New Beef House

[Sir loin]

I want some ideas please for the internal design of a new beef house that I intend to put up this year. I have applied for planning for a 45 x 20 metre shed to house 90 suckler cows in November as dry cows to calve March April. It is to be straw based with scraping passage,head locking yokes, an easy safe system for penning when calving (see my original thread on me not being as quick as I used to be!!!!).
Questions:

1. Central feed passage? (is it a waste of space)
2. Big oversail and feed on outside (leaves stock open to the elements as no sides to shed) we are on an exposed site.
3. How high to the eaves 4.5 metres?
4. What size pens?

would like to see some photos of other peoples beef housing if possible to get some ideas do not want to do this and wish I had done it differently.

 

[mushnt grummmble]

those round cattle sheds look good

 

[Sir loin]

for finishing cattle maybe but a tad expensive for the humble suckler cow

 

[Spartacus]

For our feed passage we have a 4 foot channel (enough for 60 ft with 4x8 ft feeders bolted together and to the floor) with a teagle tomahawk to shred silage in over the top of the barrier so no space wasted and its in the middle of the shed, if you don't want a Chopper then they would fit a full bale in round or square or a grab or three from a clamp. We have calving pens in an adjoined building that are 11ft square (fit into an existing shed). Our cows are on cubicles so can't help with general sizes of group pens though.

 

[martian]

How about keeping them on an outdoor corral (an electric fence round some straw will so) and putting a dutch barn up for your straw (you'll perhaps use a bit more on the corral than in a shed), if it's still like this at calving you can house them in dutch barn...it's what we do. Very cheap, very healthy

 

[Walterp]

It's an interesting question, alright - how should a suckler herd be housed?

We put up and adapted an existing set of sheds to make a 120 cubicle/two covered silage clamps/two sets of loose-housing separated by a 12' feed passage, in an umbrella building that is 120' x 185'. It will house a 120 head herd, their progeny and yearling stores.

Does it work? Well, not really, not without further amendments. These are my thoughts on what went wrong:

1. If I was setting about it, my first thought would be 'slurry or FYM?' Given the cost of straw, I'd plump for cubicles again (pre-cast, next time) and pick ones that are easy to fix back, 'cos sucklers are hard on cubicles - which brings in the incline (which is the 'wrong' way on our setup), scraping passages, slurry pit, and where are the cows going to go when you're scraping out? Design is paramount, otherwise you'll be dodging feeder/bedders and cows for the rest of your farming career.

2. I would break the cubicles into sub-groups for cow management, say 30 cubicles to a group is a nice figure. That group should have its own yard and should be fed out of square feeders so's making feeding just a matter of dumping 2 bales into a two bins, carefully sited to allow scraping out/bedding to take place after they've all rushed to the bins. This suggests a building 120' long, so's you've got 30 cubicles divided mid way by a gate - maybe with a cross-passage like a sheep shed would have? This could contain sets of creep pens/calving pens in the centre, so make that 150' long....

3. Covered clamps need 25' to eaves headroom for FarmMasters, which ours lack even though they've only been up 15 years - poor design. They need to go into cubicles for the female yearlings and fat heifers/replacements, on the same principles as above.

4. Loose housing should be reserved for bulls, fat cattle that you want nice and clean and anything that you want fed from a feed passage. Feed passage versus cantilever? Difficult one, but we have another shed that had a cantilever design - crap for feeding, because wastage of fodder in poor weather can be noticeable. Still, it's an appealing idea. Maybe in a drier area?

5. Where would the scraping from the standing muck passage go, in these loose housing sheds? Can't go in the slurry pit, really. Hard-standing?

6. Think about the orientation of the shed - both for ventilation and because, on a windy day, the bedder won't throw straw into the prevailing breeze. It'll end up in the scraping passage, won't it?

Me? I'd forget loose-housing 'cos the straw bill will run to over £10,000 a year for a reasonable size herd. So, cubicles in groups, outside yards with feeders, lots of gates, well-laid-out runs for the scraper, the feeder/bedder and for bTB testing

And where's the handling system gonna go?

 

[Walterp]

those round cattle sheds look good

There is one up in Aberaeron, near FT.

Neat idea, but it's not for cows but for finishing cattle and, even then, the economics of spending over £100,000 to house a small number of cattle would not appeal to most cattle farmers - it's a solution looking for a problem.

 

[Gilchro]

Feed passage on the outside every time.
Feed passage would be 10 feet wide but realistically looking at 15 feet. Waste of space. Use that for housing a few more cattle.
If the cantilever on the outside is designed correctly, rain should rarely reach the feed and any that does will save a bit of drinking water
If the site is exposed, galebreaker in the gap
3 pens? How many cows to a bull? I'm assuming 30 and you can keep them in bull groups.
Cubicles are good but a flat floor with pens means that if you get fed up with cattle, you have a flat floor to work with and you can tip grain over the summer, keep some straw in it etc.
Doesn't need to be straw bedding either until calving. Few guys up here are either deep or shallow bedding on recycled wood fines until calving.

 

[Spartacus]

Sorry for the kids drawing but this is ours, cubicles up either side, central feed passage but the feed only goes in four feet of it, calf creeps at the top of the cubicles. Works well but I'd like to be able to split cow numbers to a lower number per lot so I could manage feeding better. Think its a 60*60 shed with 30 cubicles down either side.

 

[tr250]

Straw yard best for us but we have straw and we make muck which is best fertiliser i know we are lucky to have plenty so my ideas may or maynot be any good for you. first thing make it simple eg straight lines. round why???? so 100ft wide 20ft passage park loader feeder overnight so not so wasted space 40ft yard either side 160 ft long split into half big water trough in pasage way in middle one each side yorkshire bourding on ends clad sides down think theres a pic on my post poly tunnel or steel shed. not sure if this makes sence

 

[Penmoel]

Sorry for the kids drawing but this is ours, cubicles up either side, central feed passage but the feed only goes in four feet of it, calf creeps at the top of the cubicles. Works well but I'd like to be able to split cow numbers to a lower number per lot so I could manage feeding better. Think its a 60*60 shed with 30 cubicles down either side.
Spartacus, Yesterday at 11:45 PM

Surely it must be more than 60 x 60, a double row of cubicles will need 22' each, then the feed area for each side @10' each plus the feed passage 10'= 75' really, how big are the creep pens 22 x 10 ?

 

[Dave6170]

I would have 2 sheds side by side with the cantilevers in the middle as close together as possible. If you have the space.

 

[Spartacus]

Just measured the full width of the building the other day and its 65 feet wide, calf creeps are 12x20 at an estimate. The bays are 12 foot each and there are 4 cubicles fit in each bay.

 

[Walterp]

View attachment 1551Sorry for the kids drawing but this is ours, cubicles up either side, central feed passage but the feed only goes in four feet of it, calf creeps at the top of the cubicles. Works well but I'd like to be able to split cow numbers to a lower number per lot so I could manage feeding better. Think its a 60*60 shed with 30 cubicles down either side.

Sorry to bang on about it, but if you put an outside yard at each end of the cubicles and fed into feeders, you'd have the muck passage and feed passage unused. This could be converted into penning for calves, fat cattle or cows that needed extra tlc.

 

[Sussex Martin]

Like this Walter?

I have the see through plastic curtain strip to go where the opening is but havn't got round to putting it up yet, plenty of oportunity, no enthusiasm!

 

[Walterp]

Yep - that's it!

 

[Penmoel]

Bugger of a job scraping around round feeders, lifting out of the way with a loader means they generally dont last very long either, and in this area of high rainfall I always thought there was always too much waste of good silage, thats why we put a feed passage in for the cows

 

[Walterp]

Bugger of a job scraping around round feeders, lifting out of the way with a loader means they generally dont last very long either, and in this area of high rainfall I always thought there was always too much waste of good silage, thats why we put a feed passage in for the cows

We used to use clamp silage and we found exactly the same problems. Problems solved by moving to baled silage (no waste at all, period) and leaving the feed bins in one site and chained to a gate. Using a Tanco shear grab, the only waste is the occasional bit of wrap or net, and we deal with that by scraping it into a heap of 'waste' every so often.

 

[Penmoel]

I think we will have to get more layers of wrap on our bales as I can't say no "waste at all, period" Who wraps yours contractor or yourself?
With bales now worth £30 or more it will make sense to go to 6 layers I think?

 

[Derrick Hughes]

Rain and unroofed concrete big No in high rainfall
Cows and young calves don't take kindly to cubicles even with creep run back, spring calve and get them out