November 18, 2022
Drive the Illinois countryside, and you’ll see a landscape dotted with barns, abandoned feedlots and old silos, remnants of a bygone era. Over the past several decades, Midwestern pastures were plowed up and converted to rows of green and gold — and in nowhere more than Illinois, where cattle inventories are down 58% from their peak in 1972. Nationwide, those numbers are only off 20% over the same time period.
Still, folks like Nic Anderson maintain the state is ripe with opportunity for cattle production heading into 2023, in part due to its proximity to alternative feed sources like ethanol co-products and beef markets. And with skyrocketing fertilizer prices, manure is suddenly more valuable.
How to make the most of those opportunities? Anderson says the right facilities can make all the difference and help maximize labor, too.
“The right cattle barn gives you a system to take advantage of alternative feed options,” says Anderson of The Livestock Desk, who previously served as head of the Illinois Livestock Development Group for 17 years. Anderson traveled the state helping hundreds of farms do planning and expansion where he observed industry changes in efficiency and cost of production.
“Producers can utilize lower-cost feed options like ethanol co-products,” he says. “There’s so much opportunity to feed cattle in the Midwest because of our proximity to resources.”
Anderson says the three most common barn designs are monoslopes, vented gable roof barns and hoop barns.
Monoslope. In this steel-and-wood structure, one side of the roof is higher than the other to best use sun and air movement. Monoslopes are designed to maximize sun exposure for heat in the winter and shade in the summer, with excellent ventilation.
Vented gable roof barn. This steel-and-wood structure has two equivalent sides sloping upward and meeting in a covered vent, or ridge, in the center for ventilation.
Hoop barn. This Quonset-shaped structure is constructed of a tarp or canvas roof and steel arches.
“All of these buildings maximize cow comfort, feed efficiency and worker comfort,” Anderson says. “The right barn is going to change your management style, and you’ll become more efficient, not only with the cattle but with your time management.”
Anderson says each building has two flooring options:
Bedded pack. This floor uses traditional bedding, like straw or cornstalks, on a concrete or dirt floor.
Slatted floor deep pit. This floor is made of concrete or rubber with openings for waste that drain into a pit underneath the barn.
What’s the first step? Understand the needs of the farm and livestock, and know the purpose of the barn. If you can answer that, Anderson says, you’ll land on the barn that works best for you.
Ventilation considerations rise to the top for any viable cattle confinement scenario.
“The goal is always to make the barn wider and taller, because you have more volume of air to transfer air quality,” says Anderson. “I am a proponent of a 16- to 18-foot eave height, regardless of barn type.”
Gables and monoslopes
Touring different types of barns and asking questions is one of the most valuable steps you can take to select the right barn.
“We took tours of anybody that let us see their barns to see what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong,” says Derek Dean of Dean Bacon and Beef in LeRoy, Ill. The Deans have 200 spring cows, 100 fall cows, do their own backgrounding and finish 600 head each year. They graze cows on pasture in the spring and cornstalks in the winter across DeWitt County.
“Mostly people will tell you what they wish they would’ve done — and you can learn a lot that way,” he adds.
Dean decided on a monoslope bedded-pack barn for a calving barn and a gable roof on a slatted floor for their feeder cattle. The monoslope calving barn is 420 feet long by 62 feet wide and will hold 200 cows and calves. The gable finishing barn is 300 feet long by 62 feet wide and will hold 600 head. Both barns were built by Longhorn Cattle and Swine Confinements in Pittsfield, Ill.
The decision to build a calving barn and a finishing barn, he says, has paid dividends for both sides of their cattle business.
“Having all the cows confined to one area, I can check cows in 30 minutes instead of taking me all day when they’re out on pasture,” Dean explains. “They do well in there. They seem content, happy and grow really well.”
And as for the gable barn on slats, Dean’s manure management efforts have equated to balance-sheet gains — especially in 2022.