To house cows, or not to house cows? That is the question. One sure thing in modern-day dairies is that there are many ways to farm and no one way is necessarily right or wrong. For those considering housing cows, there are some common mistakes that can be easily avoided.
The next generation has exciting technology at their fingertips, but they are also faced with many more decisions and options when it comes to caring for cows.
And the reality is, that what often starts out as a pad to conserve feed, leads to putting a roof over it, which inevitably progresses to a barn.
Nico Paloto, Philip Schulz and Sue Hagenson form one of the most experienced collectives when it comes to helping make these decisions a reality. All worry that the basics are still being overlooked in Australia.
They point to the lessons the United States learned the hard way, and advise Australian dairy farmers not to reinvent the wheel if they want their final results to match their expectations.
All three have an identical message for Australian dairy farmers looking at barn design: do the homework, don't cut corners and always have the bigger picture in mind.
Mr Schulz, from Dairy Concept, said in a tight economy, it was logical for dairy farmers to progressively work towards housing cows using a modular design as they could afford it or wanted each new addition. But, he said, it was important to plan for the entire facility at the start, so that everything was accounted for.
One of the first errors people made was their barn orientation, while the second was not planning for that ultimate finish line.
"Every revenue-earning barn in North America runs east to west," Mr Schulz said.
"If you put the cows under the roof for 24 hours a day, then a north-to-south orientation is capable of killing cows in an afternoon. There is nowhere for them to get away from the sun. They'll be in potentially 60-degree Celsius heat.
"The US dairy farmers made those fundamental mistakes 15-20 years ago because they were the pioneers of this technology. Why do we need to go through the pain barrier they went through, if we don't have to?"
Ms Hagenson, who is Artex Barn Solutions' senior dairy specialist, agrees that getting the barn design right up-front is critical. It can ultimately save money and, in extreme cases, save catastrophe. She warns most DIY efforts in barn design were a false economy that, more often than not, ended badly.
"Australians and Kiwis have a 'can-do' attitude and they often think that getting a professional experienced person in barn design is too expensive," she said.
"Is it? Or is it the best money you will spend? It will be interesting down the track to see what the lost opportunities were for some of those guys that made the DIY decision.
"I've often seen farmers install cheap fans so they feel better because they've done 'something'. Then I've seen their cows standing not two metres from those fans covered in flies. They were clearly not doing their job. It has cost the farmer what he paid for the fans, the wasted electricity, and a multitude of negative implications for the cow.
"Bigger fans, bigger HP [horse power] motors may be more expensive per fan, but you need less of them, it takes less electricity to run them, you spend less money on regular maintenance and your cows will pay you back in so many ways if their environment is right."
Mr Paloto, Daviesway's dairy equipment sales and planning manager, concurs, saying poor design is the "silent thief" in barn design. He also said it came down to awareness.
Space and avoiding the heat
For confined housing, that plan includes allowing either one bed per cow in a free-stall barn or a minimum of 12 square metres of space per cow in an open-pack barn for high-production Holsteins.
The three experts have seen as little as 4.5m2 per cow allowed.
In confined housing situations, it is recommended that cows need a minimum of three metres per second of wind speed moving over them, and a minimum of 10cm (lineal) of surface water trough area per cow.
Mr Schulz said: "Cows are among the most sensitive to heat stress of any domestic animal. They drink 200 litres a day per cow, and the most comfortable temperature range for them is between five and 16 degrees Celsius. High-producing dairy cows can exhibit mild heat stress at 18 degrees. People shouldn't judge a cow's body temperature by their own. It is quite different."
Radiant heat under a barn roof remains a major concern if the roof was less than 4.5m above the cow.
Ms Hagenson said: "If a roof is too low, there is often no room to solve it by effectively ventilating the area with fans. Fans may be able to be placed in there, but they'll most likely be inefficient, because there isn't an optimum way for the air to move around the cow."
"Dead spots", where heat spikes in sections of a barn causing heat stress, could happen if the wind direction, turbulence and velocity was incorrectly calculated for comfortable oxygen exchange.
She acknowledges that incorporating ventilation, air movement and water cooling in barns increased the investment, but said it was a vital important component that could be handled with forward planning and budgeting.
"Fans are only part of the cooling solution," she said. "The fans create the turbulence and they create the wind-chill factor to a degree. But the most effective way to cool a cow is to wet her, and to add fans.
"Feedline soakers, soaking cows in the holding yard, or high-pressure fogging are all options. If you want to use water, you have to make sure you have enough water, and the ability to collect and manage the additional water coming off the barn."
Bedding challenge
Bedding was another challenge in confined cow housing.
Mr Schulz said it was a mistake for Australians to use rice hulls, bark chips and/or a combination of straw in compost barns. Kiln-dried sawdust was the ideal product to achieve the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio necessary to make a compost pack generate the heat needed to kill pathogens, evaporate excess moisture and to keep the biological mass active.
"It's fair to say that a big percentage of people in Australia are potentially looking at making mistakes in bedding," he said. "And I think some of that comes back to misuse of the words 'compost barn', because many instead want a 'resting pack' or a 'manure pack', not a 'compost barn'. I would like to see more widespread understanding of what a 'compost barn' actually is.
"A compost pack is an active biological mass. We're looking for 50-55pc moisture as soon as they reach in the high 50pc to low 60pc, we have bedding sticking to the cows and then we have a much higher bacterial load on the cows. Without the compost pack working at the right temperature, we're increasing the chances of a bacterial load and mastitis outbreaks and we're talking about a mastitis that is very hard to manage and to treat."
Mr Schulz said compost barns needed permanent mechanical ventilation.
Permits, power and foundations
Mr Paloto stressed not to underestimate permit, power and effluent solutions. While these were all seemingly obvious considerations, they were often overlooked.
The quality of the foundation dictates the finished article. "If the fundamentals are done right, the next stage of milking automation doesn't have to be a poorly sited 'add-on'," he said. "Good design won't cover poor management, but poor design and poor management is a disaster."
Article supplied by Daviesway.
This story first appeared on Australian Dairyfarmer