Construction of a barn

Practical wooden structures for sheep barns

Goats and sheep are unpretentious animals and are perfect for breeding both at home and in industrial conditions. They are much easier to take care of than cows or delicate, disease-prone pigs. In addition, sheep and goats provide the most valuable food products and wool, which is used for clothing, shoes, carpets, rugs. The profitability of the business based on the cultivation of these animals is about 25% per year.

Since winters in our area are mostly snowy and wet, rainy, it is recommended to keep goats and sheep in three ways:

  • stall-pasture: in summer the animals are in a paddock or pasture, and in winter – in a barn;
  • pasture-stall: with a longer grazing period, including early spring or late autumn (with additional feeding);
  • year-round: permanent stay of sheep and goats in the premises with a mechanized feeding system.

The choice of the method of keeping depends on the types of shelters and requirements for them.

What shelters are needed for goats and sheep

Small cattle need movement, good nutrition, as well as protection from drafts, dampness, overheating and hypothermia.

To keep animals in a stall-pasture or pasture-stall way,

you need premises where sheep, goats spend the night or take shelter in bad weather. These premises do not have to be spacious, the main thing is that at least 2.3 m2 of space is allocated for one animal. Barns can even be unheated (if climatic conditions allow, and the walls are not made of stone, iron or concrete). However, all cracks must be sealed to avoid drafts. The optimum temperature in winter is not lower than 5 and not higher than 12 ° C.

The exception is the room for lambs. It should be warm, tightly closed, covered with a wooden floor laid on logs. Additionally, straw bedding should be used. The pen for the uterus with lambs should be made more spacious – about 9 m2. To prevent young animals from freezing, the air should be heated to 14-15 ° C. Ewes after lambing can also catch cold because they are sheared so that lambs can easily reach the udder. In addition, shearing after lambing is a way to obtain the highest quality wool.

Goats and sheep need pastures – where they can move freely. You will also need sheds where you can walk the animals during snow and rain or shear them in hot sunny weather.

To keep sheep and goats year-round, it is necessary to make several rooms or internal cells in the building:

  • lambing
  • washing room;
  • department for childbirth;
  • cells for keeping queens with lambs;
  • a place for growing youngsters;
  • insemination point;
  • milking point;
  • premises for feed.

The premises should be spacious enough and provide animals with free access to drinkers and feeders. It is necessary to build separate pens for different sexes or ages to avoid possible conflicts between them. Also, each adult animal should be allocated a personal space.

Indoors, it is necessary to ensure cleanliness, sufficient light and air. You can not do without walking areas, pens and sheep shearing sheds. But it should be borne in mind that goats are naughty by nature, jump high and like to gnaw wood. Therefore, the pens should be high (from two meters) and protected from damage by teeth and horns.

Wood as a building material for shelters

In our area, the most famous are two ways of building a sheep shed:

  1. fast – budget;
  2. expensive, but so that the grandchildren will have it.

In the first case, improvised materials are usually used: boards, logs, straw, polyethylene. Such quick constructions are designed for a maximum of 10 years with regular annual sealing of cracks.

In the second case, brick, concrete, iron, wood are used. Such structures can stand for 100 years – the barns from the Soviet times have not been completely destroyed, although they can be found in an abandoned form.

But there is another option for the construction of shelters – with the use of frame construction technologies based on wooden structures Mitek. This method allows you to get a reliable shelter made of wood, which will last at least 50 years, and will cost 2-3 cheaper than traditional construction.

 

The technology has many other advantages:

  • the ability to make spans up to 30 m without internal partitions and supports, which is very useful for the construction of shelters and sheds;
  • condensation does not collect on the tree, which is detrimental to sheep wool and animal health;
  • insulated wall panels made of wood perfectly keep the heat inside the room in winter, and in summer do not let the heat outside;
  • Mitek wooden structures are suitable for working with any materials, so they can be used not only to completely erect new buildings, but also to reconstruct old ones: make extensions, change the roof; thanks to this feature, you can additionally save on the construction of sheep sheds;
  • frame construction is very precise, as it is made using computer technology and specialized equipment – this allows you to erect neat, beautiful buildings in just a few weeks.

If you want to build a reliable and practical barn, expand production, or convert an existing building for breeding goats and sheep, Pragma will help you solve this problem.

We are specialists in the design of premises and sheds based on new technology. We are a certified partner of the American company Mitek and a Ukrainian manufacturer of wooden structures: trusses, wall panels and floor trusses.