Description

After many years of struggling to store all the feed hay and bedding we need for winter, we constructed a Hay Barn to serve as a safe and dry storage area. The Hary Barn will house our yearly stockpile as well as provide covered parking for some of our equipment, like the tractor and the skid steer. Having a designated space to store this volume of resources ensures we can adequately prepare for winter without increasing risk of fire by storing additional bedding in the animal houses.

Funding

This project was funded by an anonymous donor who understood the immediacy of a designated hay barn to improve the safety of our animal residents. Storing hay in animal barns is considered a dangerous practice, and we wanted to fix that problem as quickly as possible.

Challenges

Finding a central location to place an enormous 40’ x 60’ barn was harder than we anticipated. Our property is 93 acres, but we needed to place the hay barn in a spot that can be easily accessed by both daily caregivers in small vehicles and the team members who bring in large vehicles full of supplies. We chose a very central location near the cow barn, since the round bales for the cows are the most difficult to transport.