"It's fair to say that a big percentage of people in Australia are potentially looking at making mistakes in bedding," he said. 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. Mr Schulz said it was a mistake for Australians to use rice hulls, bark chips and/or a combination of straw in compost barns. 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 challengeīedding was another challenge in confined cow housing. "Feedline soakers, soaking cows in the holding yard, or high-pressure fogging are all options.
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But the most effective way to cool a cow is to wet her, and to add fans. "The fans create the turbulence and they create the wind-chill factor to a degree. "Fans are only part of the cooling solution," she said. 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. "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. 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." Ms Hagenson said: "If a roof is too low, there is often no room to solve it by effectively ventilating the area with fans. Radiant heat under a barn roof remains a major concern if the roof was less than 4.5m above the cow. People shouldn't judge a cow's body temperature by their own. High-producing dairy cows can exhibit mild heat stress at 18 degrees. They drink 200 litres a day per cow, and the most comfortable temperature range for them is between five and 16 degrees Celsius. Mr Schulz said: "Cows are among the most sensitive to heat stress of any domestic animal. 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. The three experts have seen as little as 4.5m2 per cow allowed.
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Space and avoiding the heatįor 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. Mr Paloto, Daviesway's dairy equipment sales and planning manager, concurs, saying poor design is the "silent thief" in barn design. "Bigger fans, bigger HP 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." It has cost the farmer what he paid for the fans, the wasted electricity, and a multitude of negative implications for the cow. Then I've seen their cows standing not two metres from those fans covered in flies.
#Dairy barn design install
"I've often seen farmers install cheap fans so they feel better because they've done 'something'. "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.
#Dairy barn design professional
"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. She warns most DIY efforts in barn design were a false economy that, more often than not, ended badly. It can ultimately save money and, in extreme cases, save catastrophe. Ms Hagenson, who is Artex Barn Solutions' senior dairy specialist, agrees that getting the barn design right up-front is critical. Why do we need to go through the pain barrier they went through, if we don't have to?" "The US dairy farmers made those fundamental mistakes 15-20 years ago because they were the pioneers of this technology.
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They'll be in potentially 60-degree Celsius heat. There is nowhere for them to get away from the sun.
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"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. "Every revenue-earning barn in North America runs east to west," Mr Schulz said.