Chapter 14
Housing, Water Systems, and Supplies
A cow’s housing requirements are flexible. In a balmy climate she may need only shade, preferably an airy place with dim light where she can escape from flies while she chews her cud. In a cold climate a weatherproof building of some sort is required. Cattle are remarkably hardy. But a cow cannot endure steady cold rain and wind and must have somewhere to retreat from these. Dairy cattle endure freezing temperatures better than heat so long as they have constant access to hay and adequate water; rumen fermentation produces a lot of heat. They suffer if required to stand in icy mud. Although a cow endures dry cold well, there is an added metabolic cost, as more of her feed must go to keeping herself warm. An unheated draft-free building is what you want. You’ll have a happier cow and go through less hay. I have kept a cow in a suburban garage very successfully. A garage is in many ways ideal.
Building a nice little barn can be a lot of fun. If you’re starting a barn from scratch, here are some suggestions that will add to your future convenience and pleasure:
Plan for accessibility by a truck and trailer for ease of hay delivery and in case you ever need to load your cow.
If you have a hillside site, it’s wonderfully convenient to be able to pitch manure down to a lower-level run-in area and directly into a manure wagon.
Water and electricity to the barn aren’t essential, but they make life a lot easier. If you are in a cold climate get reliable advice about putting in a water line that won’t freeze. Place electric sockets where there is no chance a cow can stretch her neck to lick them. She can stretch a long way.
Put grain storage near the door so you don’t have far to carry it. Fence or wall off the grain storage area so that the cow cannot possibly get into it. Very important: put a convenient latch or door closer on the grain room so that it is easy and convenient to always close it after yourself. This rule will prevent tragedy. Overeating of grain, particularly chicken feed, can be fatal to cattle, horses, and goats due to impaction of the gut and to bloat.
The barn floor can be concrete or wood. New concrete needs to cure for some months; during this period the area where the cow stands needs to be covered with bedding or a cow mat. Unless scored, a concrete floor will always be slippery; if it is scored, it is best cleaned with a pressure hose.
You will need a loafing area for the cow and a separate area where she comes to be milked, preferably with a stanchion. For generations cows have been kept locked in stanchions, some never getting out for exercise. Many still are. Cows do in fact adapt to this life remarkably well, but it ruins their feet. It seems sadly confining for a family cow. Even if you don’t have fields, I think it is important to have something in the way of an exercise yard. My cow walks in and out at will. At milking time I let her into a separate milking area. This makes it easy to keep the milking area clean.
The milking area, besides a tie-up or stanchion, needs a sturdy low shelf where a bucket can be set safe from spilling. You might also want a spring-type scale to hang from the ceiling, with a hook on which you can hang the bucket to weigh the milk. While certainly not necessary, weighing your cow’s production makes possible a useful record.
A hay storage area above the cow is ideal. It is wonderful insulation from heat and cold and easy to throw down. Our very best barn ever had three levels; the cow was on the middle level. Manure collection was down below and the hay above. This was possible because both the two lower levels were stepped into a slope. The hay level was accessed by a little bridge from the hillside.
Upper-level hay storage can also be achieved with a hay elevator. These are technically simple and usually run off a small electric motor. It is basically a ladder with a continuous chain running up the middle. There are teeth on the chain, and a bale of hay set on the chain just rides upstairs. Snap it up quickly if you ever see one cheap. A hay elevator makes your friends a lot more willing to help fill the barn.
A cow needs at least fifteen gallons of water a day. A high producer will need considerably more in hot weather. Don’t slight this requirement in planning your facility. Water should be constantly available if possible. Failing that, someone will need to offer water at least four times a day. If the water isn’t constantly available, milk production will suffer. Restricting a cow’s water will also restrict her eating because she cannot continue to process her food without water.
If you are in a cold climate, life for you and your cow will be easier if her living area is insulated well enough to prevent her water from freezing. If this is not feasible (as it is not here in Maine), a good option is a submersible water heater. I find that except in the coldest weather, the heater does not need to be on continuously. Tubs with built-in wiring are also available. These are smaller but safer.
We have insulated housing around the hose bib. The hose stays rolled up inside it when not in use. A light bulb keeps the hose and faucet from freezing.
In areas of mild climate, the water problem is easily solved. A float valve that clamps on the edge of the water tub and connects to a garden hose will do the job. Such a float valve has a hose connection, and everything can be connected in the same way a sprinkler or nozzle connects to the end of a hose.
An upright pail is not sufficient for a cow’s water; it will not hold enough and will tip over. As discussed in chapter 9, a 50-gallon stock water tank is a good choice.
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Bedding
Sand, straw, spoiled hay, sawdust, or wood shavings are among your choices for bedding. If you have your cow living in a box stall, sawdust or shavings are most easily managed because they are more absorbent than hay or straw. But use whatever is plentiful and cheap. Another factor to consider in your choice of bedding is that straw or hay will make better compost for your garden. Sawdust and shavings require great amounts of nitrogen to decompose, which means that much of the nitrogen in the manure may be used up in decomposing the sawdust instead of being added to the soil of the garden. It also takes longer for sawdust to decompose than it does for hay or straw. However, once decomposition is complete, the sawdust-manure mixture still has considerable value for plants. Sawdust has been associated with a higher incidence of mastitis than other bedding but should not be a problem if kept dry.
Hay is not economical for bedding unless it has been spoiled in the making or is an excess for which there is no market. If you do use hay and plan to put it on your garden, you will want to make sure it is thoroughly composted so that grass seed is no longer viable. When bedding with straw or hay it is easiest to keep adding a new layer and build deep bedding. This is what we do; we remove the worst of it every day and keep it dry by adding waste hay. The cow remains warm and dry. This is a fine system with one caveat: the area must be accessible to a front-end loader for yearly clean-out.
The deep bedding method does not work at all with sawdust or shavings, since a thick mat of these materials soon becomes fouled, and skimming off the surface doesn’t result in a clean bed. The big advantage of sawdust or shavings is that they are easy to handle.
If you are in a grain-producing area you probably can get straw at a reasonable price, and this is the bedding of choice because of its superior fertilizer value.
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Ventilation
It is worse for a cow to be too hot than to be too cold. A cow can live in subfreezing housing without difficulty (although a portion of her feed will go toward keeping her warm), but she will be uncomfortable and her milk production will drop if she is too hot. (In the hot summers of the interior valleys of California, for example, dairy cows drop in milk production, even though lush feed is plentiful.) Worse than heat is lack of fresh air. Your cow will be processing at least fifteen gallons of water and up to seventy-five pounds of feed each day. She will require huge volumes of air in doing this. In a closed building she can use up the oxygen. That is why in a dairy barn full of cows, you usually see the windows open and ventilation fans running even in subfreezing weather.
Cows require ventilation, but not drafts. Ventilation should be provided by windows high up in the wall, so that drafts are above the cow. If you are building new housing or choosing a corner of a barn for your cow, try to choose a side away from the prevailing wind for ventilation windows.
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A Milking Stanchion
Photograph courtesy of Max Luick
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Your milking area should be comfortable for you and your cow. The stress of learning to milk will be much reduced by having your cow’s movements restricted. Your cow will hold still with a minimum of forward and backward stepping if you put her in a stanchion for milking. A stanchion is designed to hold her head in place—taking advantage of the fact that she has a large head and a narrow neck. You can build a good one out of 2x4s. The structure can span a space of any convenient width, from a minimum of four feet. Run a 2x4 horizontally about twelve inches up from the ground or floor, and another 2x4 about four and a half feet above the floor. Fasten these securely. Run vertical 2x4s across the space on ten-inch centers, except for the middle space, where your cow is to put her head through. Make this a fifteen-inch opening for the present. Now add a second 2x4 parallel to each of the two horizontal 2x4s, making a sandwich filling of the vertical 2x4s. Cut one more 2x4, a foot longer than the space between the two horizontal bars. This 2x4 will be centered vertically in the fifteen-inch head opening. Drill through the lower 2x4s and this last 2x4 to make a swivel point for this piece, which is used to lock the cow in the stanchion. Bolt through the three 2x4s at the bottom, and double-nut the bolt so it is loose enough to allow the closing piece to move back and forth easily. Put your cow in the stanchion with her head through the center opening. Adjust the movable 2x4 to a comfortable position and mark the spot. Drill through at the top and arrange a pin to hold the closing piece in place at the top. A stop block will make it easier to put the pin through the three layers of 2x4s. Once she walks into the stanchion and puts her head in the grain pan, close up the pivoting 2x4, put the bolt through the hole, and if it’s correctly designed, that’s where she’ll stay until you say otherwise.
If you are in a dairying area, secondhand steel stanchions can almost certainly be found. Some prefer to add a barrier on the far (non-milking) side of the cow such that she cannot inch away during milking. Your cow may like to lean on this barrier during milking so it should be well-braced.
The floor where your cow stands to be milked can be concrete, gravel, wood, or plain dirt. Concrete is not necessarily more sanitary. If the cow is not to slip, the surface must be roughened and will then require hosing off. Wood is my favorite. It scrapes clean, it is a comfortable surface for standing, and it dries quickly. I put a little pile of shavings on the floor behind my cow in case her barn manners should fail her.
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Supplies
In your cow house you should have the following items to assist you in the care and management of your cow:
• A curry comb to groom your cow; a once-over on the milking side before sitting down prevents debris falling into the milk bucket
• A small bucket and cloths for washing your cow’s udder before milking
• Paper towels to dry your cow’s udder
• A feeding pan for your cow’s feed ration or treats
• A grain scoop (a two-pound coffee can will do) to measure out the dairy feed
• A three-legged milking stool, a sawed-off chair, or any suitable stool about twelve inches high
• A manure fork with six or eight tines
Occasionally an infrared heat lamp is helpful, especially with a young calf. If you have a place to plug in a sturdy cord with a lamp socket, you are well prepared. For greatest safety, have the heat lamp wired through a permanently mounted porcelain socket, and be certain that the wiring is heavy enough to carry the additional wattage. Cattle are very sensitive to electric shock. They can be killed by voltages that humans can withstand. Do your wiring properly, with exposed cable in conduits or out of reach and well fastened. Avoid dangling extension cords that could be chewed. Cows have a long reach.
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The Hay Feeder
To eliminate waste, use an arrangement that requires the cow to put her head through a barrier to eat. If the space the cow puts her head through is V shaped, she won’t find it so easy to take a mouthful of hay and pull it through, wasting it on the floor. If she must take a little trouble to get her head in, she will stay there and eat for a while. The hay feeder should be at ground level, and it needs a floor. Hay feeders placed high up inside a box stall promote waste. With every mouthful the cow eats, she pulls down several more and treads on them.
Hay nets as used by horses cannot be used by cows. Unlike horses, cows do not have upper incisors. They grab food with their tongues, which does not work for eating from a hay net.
A hay ring purposed for a round bale also works fine for baled hay.
Photograph courtesy of Max Luick