How do I keep a barn dry?

If your animals are spending hot days, and every night in the barn, all the water you put in the buckets winds up on the dirt floor as urine. Add fresh manure and you have the makings of a sesspool. If you spread crushed stone on the floor that has the fines still in it, it will pack down like concrete, and eliminate the mud. With animals in there so much of the time, you will have to put down bedding, and clean it all out as needed. Worked for me.
UNK

UNK-so if I call and have crushed stone delivered, do I ask for crushed stone that has the "fines" still in it? This is all new to me.

ask for class 2, i believe

if your barn isnt very big you can get used rr ties and use as flooring leaving a small space in between each one and fill that with sand so it drains, i did that for my box stalls and it works great

I think most touched on what I was thinking.
1) Get the buckets out---they can go outside to drink
2) Go out to the barn on a rainy day and see if the roof is leaking or is the surface water
running back into the barn.
3) No gutters means rain is falling down to the base of your barn. It has to go
somewhere. If gutters aren't an option then you need to have the grading done to
let the water flow away. Ideally do both. Water splashing up on the side of the barn
isn't doing it any favors.
4) Use a stock tank to water your critters---it holds more than a bucket. A grown cow
could drink buckets worth of water in hot weather. Shade for the water isn't a deal
breaker. They'll drink more if it's cooler, but they'll still drink. Any number of ways to
build a shade screen.
5) Bedding for the animals makes cleaning up much easier, makes great compost and
helps keep down the muck. Everyone has a preference. Mine is straw. The bales are
easy to stack and handle. I know the horse farms around here prefer sawdust.
6) I don't know what kind of barn you have, but keeping animals out of a main aisle and
restricted to stalls they can enter from the outside helps keep the place cleaner. You
can keep the main aisle higher than the stalls to keep the nasty out of the middle.
7) My last thought is if you are having muck/water issues you might look into liming on
on occasion to keep it a little sweeter and smell a little better.

__________________
~Only the rocks live forever~

I would get a water trough for the animals, less mess more water, I would build a some type of shade outside for the water.

I would limit free range of the barn that will help keep it a lot cleaner.

You guys are Prob talking about Crusher Run that is the stuff that packs down and acts like cement.

I would put in a wood floor or cement, the wood will last a long time. You can leave stalls dirt and Wood in the middle and that will make clean up a lot easier.

This would be a real good reason, to have a lot of water, in the barn, imo.

Menard's has relatively inexpensive aluminum guttering. Or, make your own out of old sheet metal.

Bad or no gutters, means too much water around the foundation of a house or barn.

Not good.

So I shouldn't let them in the barn when it's so darn hot? I feel so badly for them-it has been so hot this summer! Of course I guess that's better than them living in a swamp.

I just found rr ties on CL today for $8 each. I think I'll go get as many as he has. We've talked about getting the floor cemented but what I've read said it's hard on the animals and cold in the winter. I guess if they aren't in there much that shouldn't be an issue.

Thanks for the tips. I'm starting on this tomorrow. Well, today. The water buckets have already been moved.

Can you post pic's of your barn from all angles we may be able to give you ideas that we think would be best for your floors. The way the barn is laid out sometimes calls for different floors and people also have different ideas of what a barn is.

Buy a cow waterer. Put it outside, under some sort of shade, the water is in the ground until needed, and therefore not getting hot.

Shannon,

You may want to first consider the slope involved. Best way to do this would be to drive a metal rod into the barn floor at where you think the highest point is, then tie a length of mason's string(it doesn't stretch or sag) and attach what is called a string level to it--this is a small bubble level (two bucks or so) which will hook onto the line and show when the line is level. Take the line to the different corners and make mark on the wall--then measure down to the floor and compare it with the level that is on the first rod.....
Once you figure out the slope, or maybe even slopes, you can place a water trough(not buckets which spill) at the point lowest at the wall---then dig a drain to go outside and carry any other spillage away from the building. With a tank--best on legs--you will want to drain it and clean it once in awhile, so a gravelly spot underneath, with a drain to the outside would probably work.

Then you can do the same for your roof runoff outside--sounds like you need to do some grading work to get it flowing away from the building, too........

As a temporary measure until finances get better, I would do some minor trenching--or filling-- of low spots in the dirt floor and get some bedding, as others have suggested. Your animals will thank you anyway as it gets colder--and you will get a source of compost, with good manure and urine in it--for your garden.....

geo

New to livestock, eh? And you built the barn yourself, if I recall?

Lot of little details along the way. Location of the barn makes life easy or hard. there should be no slope inside the barn, should be slightly higher than the outside ground, and of course need to deal with the water off the roof, and any side hills nearby.

Livestock in a barn need bedding, added to every other day, and then remove the soaked bedding every now and then - great fertilizer. Critters give off moisture, and in hot buggy conditions they like to create their own mud hole to wallow in.

Rock floor is a double edged sword - you will always have manure & bedding to remove from your barn, youll be removing rock as well, that's not so great to have rock in the fertilizer.....

Takes some experience I suppose, shouldn't be too hard to tell if the moisture is coming from the back of the critters or the roof or a sidehill.

Good luck, all part of the learning process.

--->Paul