The Rural Voice, 1998-05, Page 40Ci)
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36 THE RURAL VOICE
"We decided to try to become
more labour efficient and at the same
time, thought if we were going to
borrow money to do that we had to
milk more cows," Ken says.
"We looked at putting up a
freestall barn but in order to make the
free stall barn work, it would have to
be so big and have so many cows that
we couldn't afford it," Jocelyn says.
Noting that advisors say the point
where a free stall barn makes
economic sense is somewhere
between 60 and 100 cows, she says
there was no way they could afford
the quota to make that jump.
So they decided a larger,
efficient tie -stall barn was the
answer. Today they operate in a
bright, airy, naturally -ventilated tie -
stall barn. The herd of 55 cows (up
from 36 in the old barn), are tied in
two rows facing outward toward the
wall openings. There are spacious
aisles in front for feeding and a wide
centre aisle for milking and cleaning
operations.
Once they made the decision,
early last year, to build a new
addition they began doing research
into the kind of barn they wanted,
visiting other producers. While free
stall systems seem to predominate in
barns that are being constructed these
days, they found a number of tie -stall
operations they could view as they
solidified their ideas. "It's surprising
the number of people who have a
recently -built tie -stall barn," says
Jocelyn. "They don't get a lot of
press. They don't get a lot of
attention, but they are out there."
They served as their own
contractor, hiring sub -trades to frame
the building, do the concrete and
electrical work, etc.
They kept costs down by putting
in a used pipeline system and reusing
systems from their old barn. "The
milk house is still the same
milkhouse. The bulk tank is still the
same one. The gutter cleaner hooks
up to the old gutter cleaner. If we'd
One to a freestall system that would
have been a whole bunch of new
technology," Ken says.
But one bit of 1990s technology
they wanted in their barn was TMR
which, Ken says, is probably the
biggest labour saver in the operation.
In fact, when they were looking at
rising costs for the barn and someone
suggested they might be better to not