"Edible" Low-Cost Calving Barn

"Edible" Low-Cost Calving Barn BUILDINGS Livestock 30-5-35 Mark and Susan Littlechilds of Busby, Alberta, are struggling to get started in farming and have just a small cattle herd. To save money, they recently built a low-cost, temporary calving barn that they like a lot. It used no commercial lumber. The cozy shelter was made with round bales, chicken wire, metal fence panels, hay tarps, and poplar tree trunks. The barn is 30 by 25 ft., with a 15-ft. roof on one end that tapers down to 7 ft. at the other end. Since they didn't have access to flax bales (which would be longer lasting and less appetizing to the cattle), the Littlechilds used some of their own hay bales to make the barn walls. On the interior of the barn, they lined the bales with chicken wire to keep the cows from eating them. The couple also ran fence panels around the walls. This keeps the chicken wire in place and also allowed them to build pens by attaching additional panels. For example, they made a 10 by 10-ft. calf pen by adding creep feeder panels. The couple harvested poplar tree trunks to make eight 25-ft. roof beams (rafters), which are held up by eight 15-ft. upright beams. The upright poles are positioned between the bales, which sit tightly on end, and this is what keeps the poles vertical. "There's a horizontal brace beam that runs across the top of the bales, and the uprights are nailed to it," Susan explains. "Another horizontal brace beam is nailed to the top end of the uprights. One end of the rafters are nailed to this beam and the other ends are joined by a brace beam that lays along the top of the bales. Two 33 by 48-ft. hay tarps cover the roof and extend down three walls to the ground, blocking out the wind. A 10-ft. opening in the bales serves as the door and provides ventilation during warmer weather. It can be closed off with a fence panel, and during harsh winter weather, the couple rolled down part of the roof tarp to keep the wind out along that side as well. "The best part is that when calving season is over, we don't have to clean out the barn. We can just take it down and feed most of it to them," Susan says. "It's easy enough to rebuild in a different spot next year." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Mark and Susan Littlechilds, Box 123, Busby, Alberta, Canada T0G 0H0 (ph 780 349-8505; email: mark.sue@telus.net).

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