I wanna barn!!!

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We have had our place in the country for 4 years now and I want my barn built so bad I can taste it!! I have no idea what size i need or what kind of construction. I am in Nova Scotia nd want to build as cheap as I can. My dream is to house a small flock of sheep, hens, a cow, rabbits and a pig as well as a couple of ducks. I can get some poles out of my woods if pole construction is cheapest and long lasting. Help please? Do I need to put in a concrete floor? I have access to woodshavings for on a dirt floor for warmth and sanitation if that means I can get away with a dirt floor. As you can see I need a clue or 3.

-- Alison in NS (aproteau@istar.ca), October 02, 2000

Answers

Allison, we have built a few "pole" barns (actually used timbers instead) and it's a relatively simple construction method. Note that I said relatively, because you still need to know and apply basic construction technology to be successful (and safe)...esp. something the size and scale of a barn.

There are probably lots of books at the library, even sources on the web for how-to information. However, I would strongly suggest finding someone with experience locally for consultation, if nothing else. You didn't say who/how many could help, but just lifting and setting the poles will be a big effort, not to mention all the rest.

You are wise to build one building! We have built two barns, a hen house, and various outbuildings to house our stock and equipment. This was primarily because we got the materials free or cheap. If I had to do it again, I would hope to have found a way to build one building instead...less long term maintenance!

I have a dirt floor for my sheep which I bed down thickly with straw. (shavings would get in their fleeces.) I wish I had an alternative, but this works for now. You will need to carefully consider what livestock you want to have as each type may have differing needs.

I guess I would suggest that you look up some pole barn plans, talk to someone locally, and think about the rest of the answers you will undoubtedly get following this one! Good luck to you!

-- sheepish (rborgo@gte.net), October 02, 2000.


Thanks for the tips, sheepish. I really appreciate it. A lot of people look at a wanna be homesteader and wonder where they get off wanting to subject animals to their care when they know little or nothing of their needs such as housing. There is so much to learn and this is a great place to do some of it. I like that you didn't judge me as an idiot like some local farming acquaitances do when I ask dumb questions like "how much pasture do I need for 5 sheep?" and "How big a barn do I need for...?" Thanks for your help!

-- Alison in NS (aproteau@istar.ca), October 02, 2000.

Spend the winter reading all the library books you can get your hands on about the animals you want and barn plans. There is a good book called "In One Barn" subtitled "Efficient Livestock Housing and Management" by Lee Pelley. Published by The Countryman Press. It gives the basics and would be a good place to start. This book doesn't recommend putting fowl in with mammals, but I agree with Sheepish, in that I want everything in one place-- at least under one roof, and with frost-free water inside. Unless you want to breed swine you would only need summer housing and forage/pasture for them. Keep in mind that they will completely dig up any pasture you put them on. That's a good thing. You can have a new garden or field crop wherever they have been.

You didn't say what building skills you have but most anything can be learned anyway. If you have a supply of logs, you might consider a log barn. There should be plans and instructions available at the library. Good luck and let us know what you decide. You can always ask questions as you go along, too.

-- Peg (NW WI) (wildwoodfarms@hushmail.com), October 02, 2000.


I started with a run-in shed and went on from there. It wasn't my dream barn but it was easy to build and add on to. A friend used to haul large machines that were packed in heavy crates. I used these crates for siding. I wish he still worked for them because I miss the thick pine they use. I've settled for T-111 but it's not the same.

One thought, how long do you have to season just cut wood? Wouldn't want you to build something that shrinks or whatever because the wood was too green.

Good luck

-- Dee (gdgtur@goes.com), October 02, 2000.


I'd like to stick my 2 pennies worth in for straw (or hay) bale construction. It's cheap, it's fast to construct, and even people with minimal carpentry skills are putting them up. When the stacked hay bales are covered in chickenwire and stucco (something most homeowners can do themselves), it seals the compacted straw inside and becomes virtually fireproof, rodent proof, insect proof, and super insulated -- warm in winter, cool in summer. They have been building thse out in the plains states of the US and Canada for a hundred years, and houses built in this fashion are over a century old. I have seen nice barns built out of them too, and I am REALLY taken with the fireproof aspect!

I'd also like to put in the idea of putting down rubber mats over a dirt floor. The idea is that your bedding (shavings) then absorbs the urine from the animals nd you cart it out. It doesn't sink into the ground and the smell is reduced, increasing both your and the animal's health. It's also easier on everyone's legs and feet. Our barn has both concrete and rubber-matted areas, and I've got to tell you, standing on that concrete all day is a leg killer,as well as chilling your feet. I can stand it much longer in the dead of winter doing chores if I'm on the rubber mats. We have -20 F. routinely in winter.

-- Julie Froelich (firefly1@nnex.net), October 02, 2000.



Alison read and visit farms. I wouldn't want all my animals in one barn and prefer that they each have thier own space. I also have the book All in one Barn and reading it was exactly the reason I didn't use many of the techniques, though having your rabbit hutches up in the rafters of the hen house works great! Dirt floors are the way to go and then we bed deeply with shavings during the winter. Even with the dairy barn for the goats (I keep the heavy maintence animals in it, milkers, kids on milk, materinity watch, and sick pen) but I like to grow my junior/yearlings off in an out barn in the woods/pasture, want my bucks out away from everything with very secure fencing, and certainly don't want them standing in the dairy barn all day blubbering to the does and standing on the walls looking over. Chickens are great to free range during the day to eat all the spilt morsels, but need to be penned at night to roost and poop anywhere but your nice clean barn, and especially laying eggs in your hay! Ducks make horrible messes in the waters, pigs will dig under pens. I love all my animals, but I prefer them in their own barn, their own fence eating their own food. And in the case of pigs, mine are raised in an old 4 horse trailer, there isn't enough land in Texas to fill in the holes my pigs have dug, just prefer my property to be neat. Think small, with a really good plan to your barn to add on. Treated material is the way to go from the beginning, instead of having to replace rotted material. One trick we have in the dairy barn is that none of my exterior walls touch the ground, they were left about one foot shy of touching the ground. Then we went back with treated plywood and sided that 1 foot from the gound, so when we do have rot we only have to replace that 1 foot of material rather than whole sheets of plywood. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), October 02, 2000.

Goat raising friend of mine built a sturdy goat barn using poles and cast off pallets. Covered it with tin as he could afford it or salvage it. He has also made pole and chinck shelters for his animals.

-- Jay Blair (jayblair678@yahoo.com), October 02, 2000.

Keep in mind that the same chemical that makes black walnut trees toxic to the surrounding scenery also causes foot problems in animals bedded on said wood chips, sometimes fatal ones. Make absolutely sure that you don't have any walnut chips at all in your bedding mixture.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), October 02, 2000.

Last spring, my Dad showed up at my house with a pick-up and trailer loaded with treated posts, lumber and galvanized, corrigated steel panels, all of it salvaged from dumping sites. Our only expenses were for sacks of concrete, fasteners, tube of sealant and beer. He came up with the building plan with a pencil, piece of scrapwood and excellent math skills, while sitting on a bucket looking at the salvage pile.

It is a 16' x 10' half-barn which I am collecting salvage to expand it next year. It has a hay and feed storage area and hay rack made from pallets and other salvage. We just completed a sandstone block floor in it which will be covered in woodchips made from our slashpiles. Our total cost was under $60 plus good meals and a good load of firewood for Dad to take home with him. It currently is for our horse but in the future, it will be the milking parlor for a cow.

The most important tools are a good creative brain, hard work and a good eye for junk.

Our future projects are a strawbale barn on an existing foundation with a salvaged roof and a log shelter way on the back side of our property.

Remember, if it looks like you may be able to use it someday, drag it home. You can always haul it back to the dump if you don't need it.

-- Laura (gsend@hotmail.com), October 02, 2000.


Alison, we have all been newbies at one thing or another at any given time. I am still learning SO much, especially here at CS forum. And...if you are asking the question, there's probably several lurkers out there that have the same thoughts. So..it's a benefit if you ask!

I forgot to mention that having animals in one barn also means (to me) having separate doors for various species, separate paddocks outside the doors, etc. The chickens, ducks, geese (well maybe geese since they live with our sheep) would NOT have free range all over everything. Instead, they would have separate quarters so I could access them from one location (inside the barn). However, they would need be separated from each other.

Rams would be located in their own special place (other barn/shelter and/or freezer!)to avoid what Vicki mentioned!

-- sheepish (rborgo@gte.net), October 02, 2000.



I don't care for the one barn idea, I worry about illness infecting all my animals. I have seen plenty of people with one barn and are sucsesful, but it just does not fit into my operation.

Being in Florida shelter is a lot different than the northen areas. We use a lot of Pole Barns some with peaked roofs the smaller one with shed roofs. Most of my Barns are open all have dirt floors except for the hog barn which is concrete.

I have 11 barns and sheds on my property and I would like to have few more.

-- Mark (deadgoatman@webtv.net), October 02, 2000.


We built our new pole barn last summer from mostly salvaged materials from a shed that we demolished (23 feet X 40 feet). The neighbors were thrilled to see that previous eyesore disappear, and we became the instant heroes of our county (the previous owners had left a negative impression with the above-mentioned eyesore shed).

I highly recommend the book: Building Small Barns, Sheds, & Shelters, by Monte Burch. We used this book extensively throughout the construction. We chose the horse barn shown on page 158 of the book. All told, the barn cost us about $5,000 (including new roofing, hardware for the barn door, windows, concrete pilings three feet deep in the ground with the wooden posts anchored on top to eliminate rot problems,etc.) We salvaged a side door for $5 at a yard sale and used many other frugal ideas, including building the barn ourselves. The only thing we contracted out was to pay someone to dig out the post holes with heavy equipment, and paid someone else to bring out a cement truck to pour the concrete posts.

Also, you should try to line up additional helpers when you go to build. Our relatives came to help and were invaluable lifting items to the roof, salvaging lumber from the old shed, etc. I kept my crew well fed, and they worked themselves to exhaustion for three weeks. All in all, though, we had a great time, and it is one of our best memories about this place. Much success to you in your endeavor!

-- Liz Rhein (merhein@shentel.net), October 02, 2000.


i would prefer more then 1 shelter too. i use cow pannelslooped up in the air like an arbor stacked to the ground then covered w/ a tarp. the back side i use straw bales to fill in the opening and for the front i use the bales straight up and down to leave enough room for the animal to walk in. by doing this come spring i take every thing down and move it. i think it cuts down on worms and such.

-- renee oneill (oneillsr@home.com), October 03, 2000.

I have been reading everything I can get my hands on for the last 6 years on farm animals, their care, and housing them. I find though that reading is way different than doing (just ask me about kids..I knew heaps before I had 'em..then I was completely blown away by what I DIDN"T know!! so much for prenatal research..LOL). I love input from those that learned by doing. I feel intimidated when I ask my agriculturally educated neice (she's a vet now)..the info goes right over my head! When she or another expert start droning on about so many variables etc etc etc I kinda zone out. Bad habit I picked up in university i think. I am intrigued by the qualities and cost effectiveness of bale construction and toyed with the idea of cordwood but dismiss it now as too labor intensive. I have been to heritage farms where there is lots of separate housing and to ones with the bulk of animals in one barn (separated of course although the fowl free range daily and yes it is messy) Maybe my husband wasn't all wrong about starting small with one "shed" at a time as we can afford it. Does bale construction require a poured foundation? I am familiar with the basics..rebars as support, hardware cloth over bales to be covered then with the stucco...thats about all i remember except that I recently read something (In countryside??) to the effect that chicken wire was not recommended. Thanks for all the input! Keep it coming as you see fit please!

-- Alison in NS (aproteau@istar.ca), October 03, 2000.

Yes, definitely separate areas and pens but under one roof please, at least here. Up here in snow country we have to shovel or plow paths to all those buildings, not to mention hauling water and feed. A snowfall can easily be a foot at a time and was 39" one Halloween. That's not a misprint. Snow to my hipline and it all had to be moved. The good news is that most diseases and pests die off with the onset of cold weather so we have very few of those problems.I guess it depends a lot on the part of the country a person lives in and the surrounding terrain.

-- Peg (NW WI) (wildwoodfarms@hushmail.com), October 03, 2000.


Alison, I have a great plan for a portable calf shelter that I used as a run-in shed for my horse. I have sent this plan to another who needed something for sheep and she thought it was perfect. When I built my main barn, I just enlarged this plan and closed the front. I have since added a second shed to make it look like a leanto. If I wanted, I could move this second part to another place on the property. The other good thing, in my area, these moveable sheds are not taxed because they are not permanent.

Unfortunately, I still have not figured out how to send copies threw the computer yet. If you'd like, I'll snail mail if you send you address. I think I'm gonna send these plans to the magazine so others could enjoy it.

-- Dee (gdgtur@goes.com), October 03, 2000.


You aren't so far from me here in Maine. I've been up there to visit a few times and loved it! We have the weekly sell or swap, Uncle Henry's(cover says it serves Canada). In the Free For the Taking section there are constantly sheds or older trailers if you can haul one. I know lots of people who use old trailers for barns. Maybe you can find something up there. If not Uncle Henry's website is: www.unclehenrys.com

-- Epona (staceyb@myway.com), October 04, 2000.

I've never seen or tried this, but the Small Farm Journal had an interesting article on "Wattle and Daub" construction. It involves chopping straw into your soil (which I think has to have some clay in it?) and making a slurry (the daub) which you then press into the wattle. Wattle looks, I guess, like those English fences woven out of willow. The wattle is fully covered with the daub in multiple coats and is eventually paintable with latex, according to the article. It sounds like one could create that type of building from the bushes, scrubby trees and earth right where you live. I suppose it's what European homes were if they weren't made of stone, all those centuries ago. It sure would be cheap to try. I'm thinking of enlisting my many small children into the effort of making a small goat barn by this method. Good Luck, the article was fascinating in any case. Daniel Fagan

-- Daniel Fagan (fagandr@juno.com), October 05, 2000.

As a person living in a strawbale house, I, too, think strawbale would make a good barn. Particularly in a place like Nova Scotia. You wouldn't need to have a poured concrete foundation, but of course the more true and level your foundation, the less trouble you'll have later on. At the very least, you're still going to need concrete footings under the walls. My house is post & beam, with bale infill. If I were making a barn, I'd probably do it "loadbearing style", where you rest the roof directly on the stacked strawbale walls. But, come to think about it, you're going to have to figure out snowloads there...that is, how much you can expect the snow to weigh and thus how strongly you need to build the walls holding them up and how steeply to pitch the roof so that it sheds rain and snow well.

But you know, a lot of barns are pretty primitive, in terms of insulation & ventilation. Maybe the cheapest way to go would be to get one of those metal building kits, maybe even one that is just a roof resting on columns, you know, like a carport, and then stack up strawbale walls. If a kit were legal, then the engineering would be already figured out & approved, and you wouldn't have to think about it. One thing to remember when you're planning it is to allow two foot overhangs (eaves), to keep water off the walls.

Although the article in Countryside said chickenwire is unnecessary and I know there's a whole school of strawbalers who say don't bother, my husband (an architectural designer & journeyman carpenter) says the chickenwire greatly increases the diaphragm shear strength of the walls, which is archi-speak for it makes it stronger in an earthquake. Our building plans were approved with chickenwire specified, and so chickenwire there's gotta be.

That's another question to consider: Are you building a code building, or what are the ordinances/regulations regarding farm outbuildings? Talk to your provincial/county building dept (but don't give them any particulars in case you decide to wing it...but you didn't hear that from me....)

-- snoozy (allen@oz.net), October 08, 2000.


Okay, this may sound goofy. My "barn" is an oversees shipping container. Hey, we all have to start somewhere. I purchased it for $500.00.

I have pics of mine at

http://cypresschapelfarms.cjb.net

look under GROUNDS.

Take care, Mary

-- Mary Wagner (cypresschapelfarms@mail.com), January 21, 2001.


Mary: Your shipping container barn is pretty neat! Great when you can use or rather, re-use something like that! How did you get it? Do you live near one of the coasts? Jan

-- Jan in Colorado (Janice12@aol.com), January 21, 2001.

I like the idea of 2 barns,1 for animals with stalls,grain bin and hayloft and 1 barn for machines. I always thought old semi trailers would work, maybe even partially buried in a hillside for added warmth.

-- Tom (Calfarm@msn.com), January 22, 2001.

I appreciate everyones ideas so much! thank you. I have picked out a 16 by 24 barn with an 8 by 16 lean to shed attached. I am thinking feed and the mower and tools can go in the shed and animals in the barn, and hay in the loft. Now..what kind of flooring...A cement slab is going to run us a pretty penny and using using those tubes and blocks with a wood floor is cheaper. Its making my head ache thinking about it. all this having to be up to code blah blah blah... Anyways, since we are not carpenters we will get the barn framed in and do the rest ourselves. At least thats the plan for now...

-- Alison in Nova Scotia (aproteau@istar.ca), January 23, 2001.

I'm reaLLY jealous (SP) I'm seven years behind in my five year plan for building a barn.. Maybe this year....still dreaming, good luck on yours

-- Wayne Roach (R-WAY@msn.com), January 28, 2001.

Hubby made good on his promise and construction has begun! Whee! we had the sona tubes put in by a contractor and are doing the rest ourselves with help from friends when needed. The 6x6s are up and floor joists going in. Its going to be a 24x18 with hay loft and gambrel roof. I am so happy I could just spit! :o)

-- Alison in N.S. (aproteau@istar.ca), August 11, 2001.

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