this old barn…

…in Southern Norway…

dairy stalls…

This being a small and very old farm, we quite naturally also have a small and very old barn. No plans to change that, as there's nothing to gain by building a new barn – especially now that its role and use have changed.

Upgrading is another matter, and the barn's interior was radically altered around 1997 - 98.

This was the first step in the process of turning it into a suitable temporary housing and milking stall for free-ranging cows, and make optimal use of space for its new role.

As mentioned: the old barn isn't large, but the building is 20 meters long and with a relatively new, covered, manure storage extending at one end. I don't know how old the oldest parts of this building really are, but saying “a few hundred years” won't make me a liar.

before…

The dairy stall floor housed 6 cows in fixed stalls, with spare room for a newborn calf or two. The ceiling was so low that a normal-height person had to watch out for the exposed beams overhead. Clearly not an ideal workspace.

Stall width – space for each cow – was also slightly narrower than required by the latest regulations, and had to be widened. The old stalls met requirements for the cows they were originally built for – more in size with our Jersey/NRF cows, but today's NRF is bigger.

The old layout wasn't particularly bad for neither animals nor farmer, but clearly not up to today's standards. Many factors had changed since the last major renovation more than 40 years earlier. Parts of the building was also in need of some fixing anyway, as exposed wood tends to weaken over time. The construction itself was perfectly sound though, so we only had to make what I would call minor modifications.

The most solid part was the old foundation, built in stone and 1.2 meters (4 feet) thick around the old stall and partly underground at the backside of the building. Making sure these very old stone walls wasn't compromized, was important, as we let heavy machines loose on the landscape around the barn to create new accesses and secure proper drainage next to the building.

There was only one entry-point – one door – to the stall-area. This meant the animals had to walk across the main farmyard in front of the barn on their way to and from pastures during summer, the same door and area used by everyone who had any business on, or visited, the farm. Clearly not ideal.

after…

The upgrade gave room for 5 milking and/or resting stalls in the old line-up and 6 more resting stalls next to them in an internal expansion – in total nearly twice the space of the old.

According to regulations we now have ample room for 8 NRF cows and 3 of the smaller Jersey/NRF cows. Temporary upstalling for moving cows around during milking, completes the upgrade on floor-level.

Height to ceiling is now a comfortable 2.4 meter (8 feet). Soft light from all angles and positive-preassure ventilation integrated in the ceiling, turns the cow's indoor area into a dry, light and very good work space for two and four-legged creatures. The thick stone walls keep the stall-area cool in the summer and warm in the winter, which was one very good reason for leaving them as they were.

The upgrade also gave room for two well-sized boxes for newborn calves, raised and placed so calves have perfect view to and contact with the cows when they are in, and facilitated with milk-feed station and access to other food calves should grow accustomed to. Two additional calf-boxes can be put together in no time, if necessary.

A new calf spend from one to a few weeks in one of these boxes, before joining other calves in an utdoor pen. More about the calf pen on another page.

The stalls now have several entry-points, vs. a single one in the old layout. Two doors lead to the main farmyard in front of the barn, and one door connects the stalls with the office-area and the milk handling room behind it. There are also indoors passages to the hay-loft and the rest of the barn above the stalls, which is nice to have when the winter-storms are at their worst outside.

Finally we cut through the stone walls and installed a door at the back of the building. So now our cows have their own paths to and from pastures, which they don't have to share with anyone but the farmer and a small tractor now and then. This separation is good since they now walk in and out at least twice a day all year round, and one cannot accuse cows of leaving their paths perfectly clean.

milk handling…

Well, milk is what's produced on a dairy farm, and a completely new room for handling and storing the white stuff in accordance with rules and regulations, had to be built. We practically blasted and dug space for it in the old hay-storage next to the stalls, and somehow managed to get it all inside the old stone walls without having to make compromises.

The milk comes through the wall in two glass pipes that forms a closed circuit above the cows in the milking-stalls. The milk ends up in a large glass-container which is part of the closed-circuit arrangement.

From there the milk gets pumped over to a storage-tank a few liters at a time, were it is pretty quickly cooled down to below 4°Celcius and stored until the man from the milk processing plant comes for it – 3 times a week.

The many pipes, tubes and boxes on the wall are controlling vacuum and pumps during milking, and also the automatic cleaning-processes that takes place before and after each milking. Cleanliness is of course imperative, and it's all stainless steel, glass and special plastic and rubber that can take the cleaning-solutions and boiling hot water used.

This being a small farm, we got a new 500 liter storage-tank installed after the rebuild. This is a small tank by any measure, but still 200 liter larger than the one it replaced. We're only producing around 34000 liter milk a year, so the new tank can hold the milk for 3 pick-ups a week – most of the time.

Providing access for the “milk-man” at one end, and us from the other end of this milk handling room, was one of the layout problems we had to solve within the existing building. This double-entry arrangement is to prevent cross-contamination between farms along the “milk-man's” route.
One can never be too careful in this business…

recycling…

What could be recycled was recycled during the barn-upgrade or stored for later use, as we see no point in throwing something out one day and then having to buy something almost identical the next day. We also didn't mind picking up for free, lots of perfectly good material other farmers threw out when they were upgrading around the same time. There is almost no end to what can be recycled with the help of a few power-tools and some welding.

Modifying and combining old and new parts to suit a particular need, has been part of this farm assistant's jobs in entirely different fields for decades, and he is quality-minded when it comes to function and form – in that order.

It can be difficult to find something useful with the right qualities and measure­ments on the market these days, so temporary solutions may have to last a bit longer than one wants. Not really a problem, as most homemade, temporary, solutions on this farm work just fine year after year, and they don't cost much. We may recycle them.

Even though I have updated and added details to this article a few times, there are of course lots more I could and maybe should have included. Wouldn't be of much use though, as minor changes to the building's work-areas are introduced whenever we see fit.

As for most things on an active farm, this old barn will never find its final form and function, and in my opinion this is how it should be.

sincerely  georg; sign

Hageland 21.oct.2007
last rev: 10.aug.2008

this old barn…

The old barn is prepared for many more years of service.
— Georg

The ground floor can look a bit crowded at milking time, as the cows are not fixed very tightly in their respective stalls.
— Georg

The heifers rest in their own stalls while the cows are being milked.
— Georg

Week-old calves can consume a lot of milk in one go, so we have to slow down and spread the supply.
This is one way to imitate nature and get healthy animals. Most else comes down to spending time with them.
— Georg

Well, how complicated does it have to be to create office-space in connection with the stalls?
Everything fits into a small cabinet, and we and the veterinarian have free view to the animals we're filing data about.
— Georg

The barn's old stone wall creates a nice atmosphere in more than one way, both on the inside and on the outside of the barn.
— Georg


farming…
…2000 - 2008