A young farmer and agricultural contractor in Northern Ireland has built a high-tech livestock house in which to finish beef cattle, with emphasis on safety.
With so many farm accidents with livestock these days, when James Kennedy, 27, needed a new beef house, he decided it must be safe to work in and last his lifetime.
His new 100- by 73-foot shed was completed in October 2020 and is full of simple yet clever solutions to make handling livestock much easier, even for one person.
Based at the village of Rasharkin in County Antrim, Kennedy follows a business model of buying store (not ready for slaughter) beef cattle, usually in spring and fall to fatten them before killing them at the abattoir.
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“A local cattle dealer buys all the cattle for us each year as he knows exactly the type of animal I like,” says Kennedy. “The new house can hold up to 200 head of cattle which if bought in the fall are normally ready for killing by February.”
Construction of the new shed started in September 2019, with digging out the slurry tank and subsequently concreting the floor and shuttering (building framework) for the tank walls.
“The tank itself measures 110 feet by 50 feet, which gives us enough capacity for slurry and more during the winter housing period,” says Kennedy. “Once the shuttering was complete we were able to add the 16-foot floor slats. During the winter we started erecting the shed and by summer 2020 we were ready to construct the pens and focus on the interior layout. When COVID-19 hit we were in the middle of building, and the pandemic slowed up progress as deliveries of timber, tin and steel were delayed. Nevertheless, we persevered and the shed was completed in October 2020.”
Interior features
There are 12 main slatted-floor pens measuring 16- by 16 feet; six along each side of a 16-foot solid concrete central feed passage. All the slats have been covered by a rubber slat mat which gives the animals extra comfort to lie on.
One of the more simple aids that Kennedy added to the shed is small doors or panels at either end of the feed passage (central feed alley) to keep the feed where it should be. There is no feed bunk, so the silage ration is placed on the floor. If the main sliding doors to the shed are open, the cattle on each end of the feed passage could nudge feed out onto the track for the sliding door.
“Basically, these are small doors that are hinged onto the shed and locked into position by bars into the ground,” says Kennedy. “Cattle naturally scatter silage all over the place when eating and these doors keep the silage out of the main shed door tracks and also prevent any feed from corroding the tin at the bottoms of the main doors.”
All the cattle have the hair along the ridge of their backs clipped before a pour-on treatment is applied to control liver fluke and other parasites. Trimming the coats also helps to keep animals cooler and perform better inside the closed environment.
A well supplies water to the shed to be used as drinking water for the cattle, and a separate water line fills a 1,300-litre tank in the shed for a volume washing system.
“We connected up a series of pipes leading onto the main hose which is used to wash out the crush (squeeze) and the collecting pens, as well as the cattle trailer,” says Kennedy. “This hose is gravity-fed via the elevated tank we installed near the roof to give us good pressure via the volume feed. The water drinkers in the shed are fed directly from the borehole (well.)”
As part of the shed design, Kennedy installed a raised ridge in the centre of the roof for ventilation and fitted mesh wire to it to keep the birds out.
“The raised ridge, along with the vented tin around the sides of the shed, are designed to provide good ventilation for the cattle,” he says. “The mesh then was added to the raised ridge to prevent any birds coming into the shed. Airflow within the shed seems to circulate better with the main doors of the shed closed and the cattle seem a lot more comfortable as well.”
Manure handling
To reduce harmful emissions from the manure slurry in the shed, Kennedy installed a bubbler system that keeps the slurry in the tank aerated. The system blows air through circuits of valves fixed to the tank base. The air is provided from a silenced compressor through a series of valves and manifolds to ensure sequential mixing while reducing slurry odour and gases at the same time.
“The slurry-bubbling system runs for about one hour per week and prevents a crust forming on top of the slurry in the tank,” says Kennedy. “A network of pipes along the tank floor has 180 outlets that air bubbles through the slurry, keeping it agitated and preventing gas buildup. The system is silent and there is no smell. Last year we simply hooked up the Doda pump (a brand name pump designed to move sludge and slurry) to the umbilical slurry spreading system and emptied the tank without any mixing beforehand.”
Handling facilities
Every good livestock shed should have safe and effective livestock handling facilities, all designed to promote cattle movement while protecting workers from being crushed.
Kennedy has four separate collection pens that lead into the forcing pen and then into the crush or cattle squeeze. There is also an isolation pen in front of the crush for any animal that needs extra attention.
“The gate into the isolation pen opens out in front of the crush so any animal needing individual attention can be run into the pen easily,” says Kennedy. “It means we don’t have to go looking for that animal among the others to dose or inject it every time.
“We can bring any of the pens of cattle into the collection pens one at a time and filter the cattle through to the forcing pen which is curved to direct them into the crush run. No one needs to be in the pens with the cattle at the same times as it is all designed for easy flow while keeping stress levels down as well. It’s a one-way system and has worked very well for us especially when testing the cattle for diseases.”
Most of the handling system is made of galvanized steel material to make it last. The squeeze includes a scale for weighing cattle and can be adjusted to handle different sizes of cattle. There are access gates or panels on each side of the squeeze, which helps make cattle handling easier and safer.
