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In some climates calving barns are a necessity if ranchers must
calve before late spring—as some western ranchers have to do if
they want the cows calved and bred before going to summer public
range pastures. David Bohnert, Livestock Extension Specialist,
Oregon State University says most of these ranchers have some
kind of shelter where you can put a calving cow in where it’s
warmer and out of the wind, or warm up a chilled calf. “Many
ranchers have a big pen with lights, where you can watch the
cows at night and keep it well bedded, and some additional
sheltered pens or a barn where you can get cows under cover if
you have to, or deal with one that has a problem,” he says.
Oregon State University published a Calving School Handbook (by
Bill Zollinger, Department of Animal Science, and Don Hansen,
College of Vet Medicine) that includes a simple design for
making your own headcatch, and a floor design for a calving
shed, looking at gates and easy ways to move animals in and out.
Every calving barn or shed needs an easy-to-use pen or stall
where a cow can be confined for assistance. A person is more apt
to help a cow or heifer if the facility is handy and designed to
put the animal into it easily, with minimal effort or stress. A
poorly designed facility is generally used only as a last
resort, with more risk to the calving cow/heifer and the person
trying to get her into it for assistance.
A concrete pad or well drained floor is important for the
calving assistance stall where the headcatcher is situated, so
it won’t become muddy or slippery and can be easily cleaned.
Rough concrete gives traction and sure footing and can be swept
clean or hosed clean (if a floor drain is installed). Otherwise,
a sandy type of floor material can be used, with straw on top of
it to provide cleanliness and cushion (since in many instances
you’ll want the cow lying down for pulling a calf, after you’ve
corrected any malpresentation). The straw can be cleaned out and
replaced after every assisted birth.
Hinged, swing-away gates can be mounted on each side of the
headcatcher to create a “chute” to put the animal into the
headcatch and hold her still while you check her or begin to
assist the birth. Then the gates can be swung away so she can
lie down during the birth if she needs to. The headcatcher
should designed with straight sides opening all the way to the
floor so it does not put a bind on the animal’s head/neck if she
lies down. The OSU booklet describes how to make a very simple
outdoor or indoor calving assistance area with minimal expense.
Another handy reference for barn ideas is a book on beef
facilities: Beef Housing and Equipment Handbook, fourth edition
(#MWPS-6), published in 1987 by Midwest Plan Service. It has
many types of plans and options, to fit the small or large
operation. This book may give a producer a number of ideas about
what might be easily incorporated into his/her own ideal
facility.
Calving barns are as individual as the ranchers who build them,
and there are always some innovations that might be worth
looking at before you build your own. You want a barn that is
completely adequate for what you need, yet practical enough that
you can afford it. The ideal barn is different for every ranch.
In some climates and situations you may need just a simple shed
with room for 2 or 3 cows—just the cows or heifers that might
need to be brought in for assistance. In other climates you may
need room for as many cows as might be calving during a 24 hour
period.
Many years ago Dick and Judy Lorenz built a 12 stall barn on
their ranch near Saratoga, Wyoming, and it has been very
adequate for their needs. To create the 40 by 84 foot pole barn,
they first dug a foundation trench to bury a 6 by 6 inch treated
beam. They fastened/anchored large upright poles to the beam,
then backfilled the trench with coarse gravel. Other ranchers
have used a similar idea for a barn foundation, pouring concrete
in a long trench and bolting large upright poles to the
concrete. Poles set into the concrete will rot—even if
treated--because it holds moisture against them, but just
sitting on concrete they will last a long time.
The Lorenz’s barn has metal outside walls and an observation
room where someone can stay in the barn at night to watch the
cows. This “night watchman” room has a recliner for sleeping, a
restroom and easy access to the hospital/calving room. The
latter has a cement floor and drains. This assistance room has
good lighting, heat, insulation and running water (hot and
cold), which make dealing with any calving problem much easier
and more pleasant on a dark, cold or stormy night. The chute for
checking or restraining a cow is easily accessed and cows go
into it readily; one person can put a cow in with ease. The rest
of the barn stalls are handy for cows that just need to be in
out of the weather to calve, but the assistance room is state of
the art for working with a problem.
An inexpensive calving barn was created by Jim Grills near Rocky
Mountain House, Alberta, by remodeling a 20 year old pole hay
shed. He took the roof off in pieces and sawed the 20 foot tall
support posts off at 8 foot height. He then used two 2 by 8 inch
timbers for beams across the 12 foot spaced poles to support the
roof, creating a 28 by 72 foot calving barn. To make the barn
warmer, he created an insulated roof by first putting down
chipboard sheets on 2 by 4 boards, then unrolling a sheet of
plastic over the chipboard and spreading wood shavings over the
plastic. He covered the top with metal sheeting. This made a
weatherproof roof that holds in the heat. With the low ceiling
and body heat from several cows, the barn stays quite warm.
For the front wall, Grills used a 4 foot high plank wall, with a
3 foot opening above it for ventilation and light. The walls are
sandwich construction—chipboard sheets on a 2 by 4 framework,
filled with shavings and covered on the outside with rough cut
wood slabs to protect the chipboard from weather and from cows
rubbing on the barn. If weather gets cold, a plastic sheet is
lowered down across the front opening.
One of his neighbors built a fancier barn 60 feet wide by 100
feet long, complete with living quarters and an office at one
end and a ventilated, heated calving area at the other. The 12
inch thick outer walls are filled with fiberglass insulation.
Inside the barn are support posts and movable panels; the stall
layout can be altered as needed. This barn has 3 large exhaust
fans for moving air out; this ventilation system pushes warm
moist air outside and keeps the barn air dry instead of
humid—with less risk for pneumonia. The barn has several gas
heaters, but these are rarely used because it generally stays
warm enough inside with just the body heat from the cows.
Michael and Carolyn Thomas, a young couple at Salmon, in eastern
Idaho, are presently calving out 400 cows. They have 2 calving
barns (one with 14 stalls and another with 6 stalls) on their
main ranch and a small barn on one of their leased places
nearby. When they first started ranching, however, they were on
a leased ranch near Arco, Idaho, with no calving facilities and
a small herd of cows that was about to calve in very cold
weather. They created a very fast and functional barn using tall
posts set deep in the ground, to support pole rafters for a
metal roof. The walls were instantly created by stacking small
straw bales up to the roof, with pole panels on the inside to
keep the cows from eating the walls. The straw made an
inexpensive wall that also provided excellent insulation against
wind and cold weather.
“The front of the barn was enclosed with simple pole panels,”
recalls Michael, “with a tarp rolled down from the roof to keep
out wind and cold, and rolled up on nice days to let in
sunshine. We didn’t have the time nor money to build a real
barn, so we made this one in just a few days,” he says. It
sheltered their calving cows through a very cold February and
March with temperatures down to 25 below zero.
Ken Dunn, an Angus breeder at Tetonia, in southern Idaho (HD
Dunn and Son Angus Ranch) says the ideal situation is to calve
later so you don’t need a barn, but this isn’t always possible.
“We built a calving barn when we were calving early, and it
worked well for us. The aspect of ours that we really liked was
that it stayed well drained. For the floor we used a type of
pumice (similar to sand) that was available locally. It packs a
little harder, but drains like sand. This was really nice
because it was never wet,” he says.
Everything in the barn is on 12 foot centers, for the stalls.
“The barn is 36 feet wide and 96 feet long. This meant we could
use standard 12 foot panels to make the calving stalls. We could
make bigger stalls with the portable panels, and also take the
panels out and use the barn for storage or machinery when we
weren’t calving,” he says.
One of the 12 by 12 spaces was a vet room. “This is where we
keep all our veterinary supplies. It’s heated and has a
refrigerator in it, so the vaccine doesn’t freeze in winter or
get too warm in summer,” says Dunn.
The next 2 12-foot sections were a big open pen used for pulling
calves. It has a head-catch and room to store things like calf
sleds, etc. “The balance of the building was 12 foot stalls. I
feel this is a good size—big enough that we didn’t have many
problems with calves being stepped on, but small enough that it
didn’t take a huge building to house as many cows as we might
need to have in there,” he explains.
“We did not heat the barn; we just relied on body heat of the
cows. We cleaned out old bedding and limed the floor between
calves, and put new straw in every pen between calves,” he says.
The pairs never stayed in the barn very long.
“Cows that calved at night were brought in to calve and then
we’d clean the barn out in the morning. We usually only let the
calves stay in until they were dry and had nursed, then we’d
clean the barn out and get ready for the next night—or for the
day, if it was stormy. We never had much sickness as a result of
the barn.” If you keep it clean, sickness is not an issue.
The barn had overhanging eaves that hung out an extra 10 feet on
each 36 foot side, which made a covered place to store straw and
hay. “The straw was right outside the double space we used as a
calf-pulling stall and storage place. We could just step out the
door and grab bales of straw. On the other side of the barn we
stored a little hay, but we never fed much hay in the barn. The
only time we did is if a cow had a problem and had to stay in
longer than usual. But we tried to not leave cows in that long,”
he says.
“The way we built it, when you came out of the barn you came
into a surrounding pen with a water trough. We could kick pairs
out of the barn into that pen as we tagged the calves and gave
them their shots. There was straw and feed there, and they could
stay there a day and go to the field the next day,” says Dunn.
The barn was well lighted; during the day every pen had
sunshine. “There’s a high, continuous plexiglass window along
each 96 foot side. The building may have been too tall for an
ideal calving barn (not as warm as a lower roof) but we built it
so we could have 12 foot doors and all our tractors fit in
there. There are 2 big doors so we could take a tractor in and
clean it out from one end to the other,” he says. Each end has a
cement apron for coming in and out. This was very nice in these
high traffic areas; it never got muddy, and it allowed them to
grade it well, so moisture could never run into the building.
At night, the barn was lighted with big energy-saving vapor
lights. “We have the same kind in our shop, but it takes awhile
for them to fully light up. When they do they are very efficient
and very bright. We thought they might be too bright—and might
be blinding to the cows coming into the barn, so I mounted them
facing up, so it was reflected light. The disadvantage to those
lights is the time it takes for them to turn on; it takes 10
minutes for them to warm up. So we generally just left them on
all night.”
With the reflected light, there were no harsh shadows and it
didn’t scare the cattle. There were no bright spots with shadows
to make them suspicious about going into a pen. It was not as
bright as some people might like, but the cattle were very
comfortable with the subdued reflected light.
In recent years, this ranching operation has changed to a later
calving season and no longer uses the barn, but it served them
very well during the period they were calving in cold, adverse
weather.
Portable Calving Shed
For an operation that doesn’t need a large or fancy barn, a
portable calving shed can be handy, since it can be moved to
whatever field or pasture you might want it. This is ideal for a
ranch that doesn’t want permanent calving facilities, calving on
new, clean ground each year. Canada Agriculture Research Station
at Melfort, Saskatchewan published a design for a portable shed
that can be created with welded pipe for the frame (2.5 inch
steel pipe or 2.25 inch drill stem pipe). The skids can be made
from 2 by 8 lumber, logs, or rough cut lumber, with 2 by 6’s for
the uprights. The portable shed can have 2 or 3 stalls, each
with a built-in pipe frame headcatch (dairy stanchion style) and
crowding gate to put the cow into the headcatch. A heat lamp can
be situated in the corner of each stall, if desired, behind a
protective barrier so it can’t be bumped by a cow or calf.
Propane heaters can be used if there’s no electricity available.
The doors are created in two pieces, top and bottom. The top
part of the door to each stall can be swung up and latched open
in mild weather to let in sunshine. The bottom can be latched
open when the stalls are no longer needed for calving, allowing
calves to enter the stall for shelter or as a calf creep. If a
person wants an actual “barn”, two of these portable sheds can
be located face to face to make a small barn with an alleyway
between the 2 sides. These sheds can be moved anywhere, to
provide clean, sheltered calving stalls wherever they are
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