building a barn from scratch(here's a drawing what do you think?)

[lorihadams]

Here is a drawing for a 20x30ft barn with a 20x20 loft. What do you all think?

The feed room would be 8x10 and so would the coop. The concern we have is that a 4 ft walkway would not be wide enough. What do you think?

 

[Farmfresh]

In my opinion NEVER build a barn that you can't drive a truck into.

You have left room for a real stairway when all you really need is a ladder space to get up into the loft area as well as some form of hoist to raise bales etc on the rafters.

If it was me I would forgo a loft area. Then you can simply stack the bales higher.

Points of planning.

#1 How many large (hay eating) animals are you planning on housing total?
#2 How much hay will need to be stored for their consumption at a time (winter to green grass)? Use these figures to determine exactly how many bales you need to store and then figure the bale size to see how much loafing room you REALLY need then add a bit for good measure.

I would separate the grain storage from the milking parlor and include a sink with hot water (possibly a point of use water heater), kitchen type storage cabinets and maybe even a refrigerator. This way the parlor can be really useful.

If you are planning on goats, you will need a kidding stall and a place to raise several kids at once until they are eaten or sold. I would tend to use your turn out area to that purpose.

The standard sizes for a box stall is 10 X 10 or 12 X 12 most matting and accessories are made to fit those sizes.

I would make at LEAST one stall have a turn out pen attached in case you have a sick animal that needs to be confined for a few days.

 

[patandchickens]

General layout looks useful to me.

I'm going to come down on the side of stairs to the loft, if one must have a loft. I've been (a number of times) in the position of being either heavily pregnant or seriously-afflicted by a bad back; and known enough other people with similar things, like a broken arm, that make it difficult or sometimes impossible to use a ladder. Stairs do not take up *that* much extra space -- underneath them is great storage -- and they usually can't be retrofit easily, especially not once your back IS out or whatever.

Agree on the truck thing for large barns; but for this size, and lacking in large animals that would necessitate wide aisles anyhow, I can certainly understand wanting to use the space for more regularly-useful purposes. As long as you can back a truck up TO the barn, in a small thing like this I think it's ok not to be able to get it IN.

That said, 4' is a real narrow aisle. I would go at least 6' myself, unless this is intended ONLY for human access and you will never be leading animals in there, not even goats. Grumpy or spooked animal plus confined space equals vet and hospital bills, IME.

Do you think you might *ever* want larger animals, e.g. cows or horse? If you do, I would suggest some sort of setup that allows stalls at least 10' deep, e.g. move the aisle so it is off-center. If you are utterly positive that would never happen, current setup is ok, just less versatile.

Totally agree about making a separate milking parlor. It can be an office type area too. In fact I would advocate separating your feed area and "otehr storage" area (you have not designated anything for other storage, I am assuming you're planning on using under the stairs and the feed/milking room for it, but IME you will need more misc storage than you expect!). An advantage of having a separate little feed room is that you can rodentproof the whole ROOM (more easily and cheaply than a larger room, and it's more effective than only rodentproofing the feed bins, as there will be some spillage no matter what) and then you are not so much attracting rodents to set up house amongst your stored stuff.

That seems like a very large hayloft for just some goats -- but if you've done the numbers and that's what you need, ok; or maybe you are just figuring that if you're doing it at all you may as well do the whole thing, which is not unreasonable.

Make sure you think carefully about where the water is going to be (I assume that you will have proper water service to this barn?). With a dirt floor, it can in principle be anywhere convenient; if there will be slab floor involved though it is useful to place the water right near the edge of the slab so that when something goes wrong and requires digging up -- and someday it WILL -- you are not having to get a jackhammer.

Which direction is north?


Pat

 

[rty007]

Once upon a time... just kidding.

Seriously speaking some time a go, combo barns like that were very popular here in poland:

http://gotoweprojektydomow.eu/projekt.php?pro=7&op=PGK

it has both a hayloft and a little bit of basement ( dunno what for tho)

it is: 9mx18m that makes it:
30x60feet

there are some more projects of this sort, so I can dig through them if you want.

 

[Ohioann]

Ten years ago we built a barn to replace a bank barn that had to be torn down. We built a 30x40 foot pole barn with 10 foot doors at both ends so it can be driven into from either end.
On the right side of the barn from front to back .. 8x10' feed and tack area; 20x10' open area with pallets on the floor that we use for hay storage; 12x10' box stall.
On the left side of the building is an 8x10' open area for storage; 2 10x10' box stalls and a 12x10' box stall. All the box stalls have dutch doors to the outside.
The space between the two sides is 10'. This is wide enough to get a truck into if necessary, to cross tie and work with the pony and donkeys safely and to be able to hitch the pony to the cart out of the weather if necessary. We get hay by the stock trailer load and we can back the trailer a couple feet into the barn and unload the bales into the 10x20 storage area.
Of the 4 box stalls we have turkeys in one, the pony in one with her own turnout and the donkeys have in/out access to another. We have one box stall for spare, right now it has a rabbit pen for a rabbit we are fostering but we have used it to isolate an animal or for extra hay storage in the fall when we load up so we don't have to haul as oftern in bad weather.
The barn has a dirt floor. If I were redoing it I would put concrete in the center and the front two 8x10 areas. We did have water put in with weather resistant spigots 10 feet in on both ends of the barn so we don't haul water. Also had lights put in each area and 6 power outlets. This has worked out for us.
We have the chickens in a separate chicken house but you could keep chickens in this barn too. Ventilation is not a problem with the two end doors, the dutch doors and the 4 windows on the right side. The barn has worked well for us. This spring we are adding rain barrels to the down spouts.
I looked at a lot of barn plans in books and magazines before we built to get ideas and then we made a list of everything we would love to have and then started eliminating until we got to what we could afford !!
There are books on building barns available at big box stores like Lowes and our library had a nice selection, as well as ideas from the extension service.
Good luck with your barn, Plan well because it's hard to change things later.

 

[lorihadams]

Well,, thanks for the input but I am going to redo this drawing. I sent it to Barb, the woman I am getting my nigis from and she sent me back a wonderful email with suggestions and ideas. I am thinking now that I may make a general flex space that I can separate out during kidding with cattle panels and then possibly use as a holding area for other things like chicks or sick animals or another loafing area while the larger one is being cleaned out. I am also thinking that we will do a separate area and coop for the chickens outside the barn, better safe than sorry. I also think that I will have a separate feed room and a dedicated milking parlor with access from the loafing area as well. I want to put a sink in there and possible a small fridge of some sort as well as a medicine cabinet and maybe a small desk. I'll have to go back to the drawing board and also look at the directions of everything too.....I think we have a western exposure to the front of the barn as it is now so we may change things around a bit. We wanted to have a good sized loft area so that we could store bedding for the goats and chickens as well as better quality feeding hay with some room leftover for the kids to play......what's the use of having a barn if you can't play up in the loft right?