What Do Barns Need to Have?

There are many factors to consider when building a barn. First, the design matters as it displays your taste and creativity. You can customize your barn according to your region’s climate or to add beauty.

Barns are essential structures for farmers. It can house your animals and store important farm equipment and supplies. Therefore, your barn’s purpose determines its must-haves. However, some essentials, like lighting, are necessary for every barn, regardless of use.

However, barns need other essentials. Here is what barns have:

Barn Ventilation

Barn ventilation is essential for fresh air circulation in barns. Windows and Dutch doors are excellent for adequate ventilation. In addition, you can leave an opening in the ceiling when planning or designing your barn.

Additionally, sliding doors serve the purpose as they are flexible enough to let fresh air into the stalls when your animals stroll in the pastures. Moreover, spacious, high-roofed barns are excellent for air circulation.

Adequate Lighting

Your barn needs sufficient lighting, whether artificial or natural. The ideal way to let natural light in is to locate your structure facing sunlight. You can also add translucent barn windows for maximum penetration.

A barn curtain protects essential barn components from adverse sun rays while letting natural light into the stalls. Artificial lighting, however, involves installing high-quality bulbs at reasonable intervals throughout the structure to supply light without natural light.

Water Troughs

When building a barn for livestock, horses, goats, or sheep, water troughs would be helpful. Furthermore, keeping the troughs clean and refilling them with clean water regularly is crucial to animal safety.

Still, you can adopt a modern design by including automatic systems in the troughs. The systems detect low water volumes and when a manual cleaner is necessary. Monitoring your animals’ water intake is essential.

A Good Drainage System

Good drainage is crucial in every barn, whether housing farm equipment or animals. It allows efficient waste removal from the stalls without clogging and is useful when cleaning machinery or animals. However, dumping foreign and complex materials outside the structure is advisable to avoid clogging the drainage system.

Storage Spaces

Every barn needs storage areas and units for farm products, first aid supplies, tools, and other essentials. Constructing a spacious barn with multiple storage spots will avoid overcrowding and clutter. Consider shelves that hold baskets and boxes to avoid permanent storage units.

Feeding Points and Systems

Accessible feeding systems are fundamental for barn animals. Depending on the type of animals in the structure, you can consider feeding troughs, hay racks, or automatic feeders.

Besides, it helps to ensure that your animals feed in clean spaces and get adequate food according to the vet’s instructions. Many farmers and vets recommend automatic feeders for their consistency and flexibility in delivering animal feed.

Emergency Kit and Supplies

While you may not anticipate misfortunes in your barn, it is best to be ready for accidents. You should have accessible emergency supplies, such as a first aid kit, emergency contacts, and fire extinguishers in the barn.

Fire detectors and emergency exits are crucial for animal, equipment, and staff safety, as well as for investing in quality emergency supplies for optimum performance when an accident occurs.

Drive Bay and Hay Bales

Hay bales are common in livestock barns. They are handy during off-season periods, such as winter, when grass is scarce. Farmers offload hay bales into the drive bay, often station farm machinery. Farmers also use drive bays to store bagged compost, materials, and hand tools.

Waste Storage Facilities

Handling farm waste products is inevitable in every barn. Plant residue, manure, nutrient-rich runoff, and animal feed leftovers are everyday waste products.

It is advisable to correctly map out waste removal, collection, and storage facilities to ensure safety and environmental protection. Occasionally, you may need to handle non-agricultural waste, such as land-clearing and industrial waste. All of these require proper disposal to ensure animal and staff safety.

A Tack Room

A tack room is useful when you have horses in your barn. Farmers use it to store bridles, saddles, and other barn equipment. You often use the supplies in the tack room when you want to ride your horses. A tack room needs careful planning and design to ensure proper equipment organization.

Tools and Equipment

You will often have tasks in and around the barn, including ferrying animal feed, injured animals, animal waste, and more. Thus, keeping essential tools and equipment in the structure is necessary. The barn is also among the safest places to store tools and equipment, including tractors, and protect them from harsh weather.