THERE are two aspects of our newdairy facilities that are differentthan current trends. First, we choseto have just two rows of face-to-facefree stalls, rather than four, six, oreven eight which are showing up insome cross-ventilated barns. Sec-ond, we chose to install feed bunksrather than have flat mangers. Wewere familiar with two Holstein op-erations, both with 30,000-poundplus herd averages, one with a two-row curtain barn with no fans andthe other with bunks.

The main reasons for us to gotwo-row involve ventilation. Oursite is well exposed to prevailingsouth/southwest summer winds.Average wind speed for Fort Atkin-son during August is 7 mph. (Ofcourse, we do have our dog days.)

However, with 16-foot-high side-walls, 60-foot width, and our rela-tively heat-tolerant Guernseys, we

chose not to install fans in the freestall barn. We do have fans in theholding pen and could add mistersthere if we thought we needed to.There is no insulation under thefree stall barn roof.

We believe our cows went throughlast summer without showing muchheat stress. Milk production heldwell during hot spells, although, asreported in our January 10, 2008,issue, page 22, we felt that newbarn/new herdmates’ stress waskeeping our somatic cell countshigher than we liked to see them.

Having a narrow barn meanshaving a long barn . . . 568 feet, infact. And having one drive alley fortwo rows of stalls means havingmore building space per stall.Working with our general contrac-tor and dairy equipment supplier,

Blake Scharine, Whitewater, Wis.,we did some pencil pushing on thetrade-offs. The following compar-isons are all based on covered drivealleys and 250 stalls, although ournew barn has 232 stalls.

A 116- by 200-foot, six-row barnwould have 23,200 square feet or93 square feet per cow. A four-rowbarn might tape 99 by 300 feet andhave 29,700 square feet or 119square feet per stall. You can seewhy people have been drawn to six-row barns, just based on initial cost.

With a 60- by 600-foot, two-rowbarn, you end up with 36,000 squarefeet or 144 square feet per stall. But,as we have said, we don’t plan touse fans in our two-row barn.

For the sake of comparison, a 250-stall, four-row barn might have fourrows of fans with six fans in eachrow, for a total of 24. In each side ofthe barn, one row of fans would be

placed over the feed and the otherover the double row of stalls.

We estimate the fans, wiring, andinstallation would cost between$30,000 and $35,000. Electricity costis going to be in range of $10,000per year assuming 10 cents per kilo-watt hour and that the fans run anaverage of 12 hours a day betweenMay 1 and September 30.

We compared our ventilation costanalysis with a similar one pre-pared by Curt Gooch at CornellUniversity. In both cases, the costof owning and operating the fanswas between $15,000 and $20,000per year.

Having a one-time expense ofextra building space per stall com-pared to annual ventilation expensein the $15,000 to $20,000 range

We chose a two-row barn with feed bunks

by Hoard’s Dairyman magazine and farm staff

February 10, 2008112

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CLEAR-SPAN CONSTRUCTIONprovides a nice atmosphere withoutmuch additional cost in a 60-foot build-ing. Our feeder essentially spends notime removing old feed from the bunk.

made sense to us. Here’s why.Let’s call ventilation cost $17,000

a year over a 7-year period. That’s$119,000 for mechanical ventila-tion. But we built about 6,800 ad-ditional square foot of building be-cause of our two-row design . . .5,800 to account for the drive alleyfactor and 960 for the drover’s lane.At $10 per square of building (shelland flat work) our additional build-ing cost was $68,000.

That seems like a good trade-offto us. The result is a quieter, lower-maintenance, and more energy-effient barn.

The covered drover’s lane enablescows in the far end of the barn toget to the breezeway and the milk-ing center, without disturbing themiddle group. The alternative isconfining the middle group of cowsto half of their free stalls while theend group is being milked. We wereconcerned that would interfere withcows getting as much lying time asthey need and causing them stress.

Disease control was another con-sideration. With the two-row design,it is not necessary to cross cow-traf-fic alleys with the mixer wagon.

Went clear-span . . . We like having a clear-span build-

ing which added little additionalcost in such a narrow building. Itprovides an attractive, unclutteredatmosphere that has relatively fewplaces for birds to perch.

Labor was the biggest consider-ation for the bunks. Our farmmanager, Jason Yurs, likes to seefresh feed put in bunks essential-ly cleaned completely by the cows.Our feeder spends no time clean-ing leftover feed out of the bunks.

On the other hand, pushing upfeed three times between twice-daily feedings would require at leastthree hours worth of labor, skid-steer wear and tear, and fuel a day.At $20 an hour, that’s $20,000 ayear. Besides, with our 2x milkingschedule we wouldn’t have anyoneto push up from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m.

Bunks aren’t cheap. Ours costabout $16,000 or around $28 perfoot. Our second barn also will havebunks, although it likely will havea different arrangement. Becausewe had poured the drive alley ele-vated 4 inches higher, it turned outthat the larger bunk we were con-sidering gave us a throat height (25inches) that was too high. There-fore, we settled for a smaller bunk. . . throat height of 22 inches anda fenceline height of 30 inches. Ithas plenty of capacity for our twice-a-day feeding, but the feeder has tobe very careful to not spill feed.

Because the bunk is smaller thanwe planned, our contractor addedan 8-inch strip of belting to thedrive alley side to keep cows fromtossing feed out of the manger. Thatbelting may not have been needed.Hardly any feed ends up in thedrive alley either during feeding oras the cows eat. However, the belt-ing sure gives our cows somethingto chew on when they’re bored.

Circle No. 23 on Reader Response Card