The Farmers Mart Oct-Nov 2018 - Issue 59 | Page 51

FARM BUILDINGS & EQUIPMENT 51
• OCT/NOV 2018
will help to wash itself with every bit of
rain. To put it simply if you can keep the
farmhouse and yard at the top end and
direct all the muck to the low end, clean-
ing will be a lot simpler and life a lot more
pleasant with a lot less earache from the
housekeeper.
Just because you wear wellington boots
to walk through the cattle field and gate-
ways doesn’t mean it’s alright to need
them around the farmyard. When you are
designing your building make sure you
know what you really want and design it for
the real use.
£2,000.00 goes nowhere with vets bills,
antibiotics and loss of growth rate or even
lost/dead animals, all too often these
factors are just put down to a fact of life,
especially on a farm, just by buying/using
the cheapest options at the beginning.
Very few open sided buildings work well
for animal housing as far as ventilation and
air exchange work, people say to me “oh it
will be alright with one side open”.
After buying a smoke machine some 5
years ago and testing buildings I can as-
sure you they don’t work. They may work
reasonably well on a cold, wet, windy
day when all of us are glad of shelter, but
if you get a good spring day with the sun
shining, with a bit of warmth in the build-
ing you will find there is probably no air
movement at all, if there is any it is going
out through the back side of the building.
Animals need basic simple shelters.
Shelter from the wind.
Shelter from the rain.
Shade from the sun.
Plenty of fresh air movement above
animal height.
Left alone in nature, animals will always
find natural shelters, behind a wall, hedge,
shelter belt, in a hollow, all with move-
ment over the top of them so they always
have fresh air to breathe in.
So the starting point for animal housing
has to be shelter and air exchange.
Animals like having a wall to shelter
behind but need plenty of air movement
over the top of them.
All of us probably understand about
trying to keep the prevailing wind and
rain to the closed side of a building, yet
we all fail to leave enough openings in the
‘
Your starting point
needs to be air exchange
and getting the correct
number of air exchanges
per hour, this needs
to happen every day
of the year, not just
on windy days
’
ridge to allow warm stale air to rise up
naturally and exit the building as soon as
possible.
I hear all too often that we need a big
tall building with lots of air for all these
animals. The basis of this is totally wrong.
What is needed is a high rate of natural air
exchange to keep your animals healthy,
which overall will reduce vets visits and
antibiotic use, possibly saving you thou-
sands of pounds annually, all for a bit of
time planning and no more expense than a
couple of thousand upfront to begin with.
All too often I get told we have to put
a fibre cement roof on livestock housing
to stop the condensation, I put it to you
that this idea has had a disastrous effect
on animal health because it absorbs the
condensation and hides any ventilation
problems.
You only get condensation through a
build-up of humidity, if this is happening
there is a ventilation problem.
You have to do something to increase
the air exchange.
A bigger volume of air won’t increase the
air exchange it will probably only exasper-
ate the problem.
Your starting point needs to be air
exchange and getting the correct number
of air exchanges per hour, this needs to
happen every day of the year, not just on
windy days. The cheapest is always the
stack effect from warm air rising, and,
in reality a lower ridge height will allow
the air to leave the building quicker. In a
tall building the warm air rises, cools and
comes back down before reaching the
ridge. Fresh air is free, where else can you
get free animal health.