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Several of the calf sheds I have feature here have been of a larger scale, capable of holding over 100 calves, while a good deal of them have been designed for automatic feeding.
It’s something that more and more farmers are looking to do, with skilled labour for such a short-time period in spring hard to come by.
But what about calf housing for dairy beef farmers or smaller-scale dairy farmers who are looking to rear 50-60 calves?
A massively wide shed is probably not going to sit well in this type of yard and even if it did, several of the calf sheds I have featured here on the farm buildings pages have been capable of taking 30 calves/pen; this would leave the above farmer with a two-bay long shed that would likely be wider than it is long.
As a general rule, wide calf sheds can be hard to ventilate naturally, so having a narrower shed that suits our needs will address these two problems.
Floor layout
Figure 1 gives a general breakdown of the calf shed I have designed.
The shed itself measures 19.6m (63ft) in length (four standard bays) and 10.6m (35ft) in width.
In the penning area, the straw lie back measures 5.2m in depth (17ft) while there is a 2.4m (8ft) wet area to the front of this, which would be separated by a concrete plinth or a timber to keep straw from being dragged on to the wet area.
This wet area should be where meal, roughage and milk replacer is fed, with the water trough also preferably located here.
The floor of the straw bedded area should be cambered towards the wet area, with an effluent channel taking away any excess effluent.
To the front of the wet area is a 3m (10ft) wide feed passage, on which concentrate, milk replacer or fodder can be stored.
The farmer can either access the feed passage through having doors at either end of the feed passage, or they can install a door along the side of the shed.
Penning
The bottom two bays of the shed are amalgamated to best service the feed station. Most manufacturers will recommend approximately 30 calves per station. Taking our total lying area of these two bays, we have 49.92m² of straw-bedded lying area. With a recommendation of 1.7m²/calf, we have sufficient capacity for 29 calves here. In reality, when calves are younger and smaller, we could fit a few more than this, but only for a short time period.
In our top two bays, I have installed the feed station in bay two for a few reasons. Firstly, it is likely that the farmer (if dairying) will have some ‘waste’ milk that they wish to feed to calves.
If we split bays one and two, we can put 14-15 calves in each bay, with bay one receiving whole milk and bay two receiving milk replacer from the feed station.
Even if farmers did not want to do the above, it may be easier to train calves in a smaller group. Once the first batch of calves in bay two are trained to the feeder, then the gates can be removed and the two groups amalgamated, with all calves eventually using the feeder.
The gates within the pens should be designed to ensure that calves can be locked in to either the wet or dry area to allow for cleaning out. There are several good engineering firms that will be best suited to plan out your shed with you.
Tweaks
This design can be tweaked to the farmer’s desires or to suit the existing yard layout. The lying area can be increased to accommodate more calves per pen, though be sure that the feed station can accommodate this number too.
Some farmers may also want a wider feed passage in order to be able drive in with larger machinery, or a wider wet area to be able clean out with a telehandler/front loader.
The above shed will also work well even if automatic calf feeders aren’t in the immediate future, but I would recommend having ducting for power and water installed in case you should change your mind.
There is also the option with the above shed to graft on another shed in the future to the left-hand side, with a shared feed passage. Locating the control unit of the feeder in the middle of the shed would also service this option well.
SHARING OPTIONS: