shed costs for beef cattle

mo!

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
York
Speaking from experience, the colour, and therefore hair length, of most of those cattle means you can be a bit stingier on space/straw. Get a big angus bullock and the bugger will find a dirty corner to lie in, no matter what you do.
Don't worry, we've got some dirty cattle!
 

Bullring

Member
Location
Cornwall
Are there any cost benefits or other to going shorter and wider over longer and narrower?
120x50=6000ft2
80x75=6000

Depends how you want to bed up, at 75ft wide straw chopper will only blow half the width unless you can access both sides of the shed, going wider the cattle have to walk further to get to feed so churn up the bedding more, perfect size is 40-50 ft wide including feed passage that can be shut off to either scrape up or bed up. 120x40/50 would be ideal in 15ft bays to optimise gate sizes. At 80x75 you wouldn’t be able to feed everything at once. At a guess you could get 8-10 max 500-600kg cattle to feed per 15ft bay.
 

nails

Member
Location
East Dorset
I’d go 200x40

120 is not enough they will be far to tight To feed and use a load of straw , at 200 they will be much comfortable and use less straw be far better set up all together .

Quite true ,If you can afford it best put up a shed a little bigger than you need. You will use far less straw if they just have a bit more space. Also a lot better in claggy weather.
 

Macsky

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Highland
Must be some money in beef, John Jenkins in Spittal has spent £500k on a new shed, albeit slatted, also Carl Vaughan in Woodstock has put a new slatted shed up.
In 10 years time, £500k will seem like peanuts, inflation could be rampant in the next few years. Watch what those with money are up to and it’ll give you a fair idea of what to expect.
 

keenanfeeder

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Midlands
One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is access, for animal handling, getting them in and out safely and stress free and machinery access for mucking it out as efficiently as possible

perhaps consider that in your design?

I favour long and thin pens personally because there will be plenty of feed fence area also it is easier to get them out of the pen if its 30ft wide Vs 50ft wide less chance of them running past you

I too like the idea of the two sheds facing each other and the cantilevers form a covered feed passage/handling passage Wareing buildings feature it on there ad I've seen it in the farmers weekly
 

Arceye

Member
Location
South Norfolk
Speaking from experience, the colour, and therefore hair length, of most of those cattle means you can be a bit stingier on space/straw. Get a big angus bullock and the bugger will find a dirty corner to lie in, no matter what you do.
We have some real dirty ones this winter, angus of course. Plenty of straw and about half are absolutely spotless, the other half find the dirtiest places to lie.
Had it bad like this once before when they stayed out a bit late, as these did, and lay around the ring feeders and got to like the muck. Tried to keep then out of the muck all winter but failed.
We have some going on Monday so clipped the sides and back legs but under the belly is downright dangerous. trouble is this is where they need to be clean, anyone ever had rejections?
Bit worried we ought to clip underneath but the kicking can be lightning fast. :unsure: :unsure:
 

Arceye

Member
Location
South Norfolk
One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is access, for animal handling, getting them in and out safely and stress free and machinery access for mucking it out as efficiently as possible

perhaps consider that in your design?

I favour long and thin pens personally because there will be plenty of feed fence area also it is easier to get them out of the pen if its 30ft wide Vs 50ft wide less chance of them running past you

I too like the idea of the two sheds facing each other and the cantilevers form a covered feed passage/handling passage Wareing buildings feature it on there ad I've seen it in the farmers weekly

We are hoping to put up a shed with a 32 foot bed area and feed on both sides. Idea is the silage one side and barley mix the other. Multi purpose so the silage side can be tmr or wagon but if we use bales the barley mix doesn't get lost in it. Spreads the trampling about a bit and if they don't need barley mix just feed the one side. Not really extravagant since the cost of barriers is about the same as a concrete wall, just doubling the feed space.
 

beefandsleep

Member
Location
Staffordshire
We are hoping to put up a shed with a 32 foot bed area and feed on both sides. Idea is the silage one side and barley mix the other. Multi purpose so the silage side can be tmr or wagon but if we use bales the barley mix doesn't get lost in it. Spreads the trampling about a bit and if they don't need barley mix just feed the one side. Not really extravagant since the cost of barriers is about the same as a concrete wall, just doubling the feed space.

I can’t see the advantage of feeding the corn and silage separately if you can feed a tmr, I think you will find performance suffers. You can always feed tmr both sides. Two scrape passages too? I think for a straw yard it’s too narrow for feeding both sides the bed will not stay cleaner, almost certainly the opposite.
 

milkloss

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
East Sussex
We are hoping to put up a shed with a 32 foot bed area and feed on both sides. Idea is the silage one side and barley mix the other. Multi purpose so the silage side can be tmr or wagon but if we use bales the barley mix doesn't get lost in it. Spreads the trampling about a bit and if they don't need barley mix just feed the one side. Not really extravagant since the cost of barriers is about the same as a concrete wall, just doubling the feed space.

Won't they just charge from one side to the other?
 

Arceye

Member
Location
South Norfolk
I can’t see the advantage of feeding the corn and silage separately if you can feed a tmr, I think you will find performance suffers. You can always feed tmr both sides. Two scrape passages too? I think for a straw yard it’s too narrow for feeding both sides the bed will not stay cleaner, almost certainly the opposite.
Sorry I didn't make that clear, firstly the 32 feet is only the inside area, they will be fed from the outside and no scrape passages. We only do round bales so tmr is very limited when we need to blend in red clover or different cuts, we try to avoid tmr since the bales put a lot of strain on the wagon.
Biggest issue with limited feed space is feeding finishing barley mix on the top of baled silage, it is always hard work for them to find it, hence doubling the feed area would work around this. We only get about six/seven big cattle per 15 feet feed space at finishing so feed space becomes a premium.
 

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