How I Built My Sheep Barn
And what I would do differently with 20/20 hindsight
My barn. Ulf Kintzel / White Clover Sheep Farm
When my family and I moved to the Finger Lakes area in Western New York about 18 years ago, I had opted for a piece of land without any buildings. Besides a house, a new barn needed to be built. Such structure was needed for several reasons:
- I needed a barn for lambing season.
- I needed a structure for protection for my sheep in extreme weather conditions.
- I wanted to store my dry hay for winter feeding inside to keep the nutritional value as high as possible.
There were several key elements that the barn would have to meet. First, I wanted a structure without supporting posts in the middle of the barn. The whole structure needed to be free of any obstacles when maneuvering with machinery in the barn, like taking manure out or bringing hay in.
In addition, I did not want the expense of a concrete floor. I wanted a compacted dirt floor that allowed me to push manure together. I also wanted the compacted soil to be relatively free of stones to be able to pound in my T-posts to set up my lambing jugs and pens with my self-made panels.
Furthermore, I wanted a barn that was light and well ventilated. Moist or humid air in the barn is very detrimental to sheep’s health. The air must be dry. The barn does not need to be warm in the winter and can, in a climate like mine, be as cold as the outside, even for lambing season. That means insulation in my area is unnecessary. Finally, I wanted the barn to be as inexpensive as possible and yet have an appealing look.
I contracted to have a pole barn built that was 99 feet long, 60 feet wide, and 14 feet high. The sides are covered with corrugated metal siding. Initially, the roof was made of aluminum. Aluminum was chosen by the company because they believed that a steel roof would corrode because of the ammonium evaporating from the manure, basing their assumption on dairy barns they had built. However, that is usually not an issue in sheep barns that house sheep only temporarily. The aluminum roof was installed incorrectly and was replaced with a steel roof a few years later. No corrosion took place afterwards as expected.
Ventilation is accomplished via two-feet overhangs on both sides and a two-foot overshot ridge on top of the roof. The overshot ridge was a mistake. It allowed a significant amount of snow during Nor’easter storms to enter the barn. The overshot ridge was later closed by about two thirds with a knee wall when the new steel roof was installed. It didn’t reduce its ventilation capacity, but it decreased the incoming snow during storms significantly. In hindsight, I would not opt for an overshot ridge again. I learned later about ridge vents that come in sections of several feet long. I think that would be a good option. The open two-feet eave overhangs are also larger than necessary. Shorter overhangs with soffits would have been a better choice.
There is a large sliding door on each end of the barn, measuring 14 feet in height and 15 feet and six inches in width. They are heavy, and on windy days it can get tricky to open and close them. In all the years I have had the barn, I never needed the doors to be this large. While I don’t consider two-part doors, I would make the doors smaller if I had a chance to do it over. I envision doors that are 10 to 12 feet high and 10 to 12 feet wide.
In addition to the large gates, I have two regular-sized steel doors. One is on the front side that I use to enter the barn. The other one is a door along the side where I have my chute. I use it to sort animals into the barn when I run the sheep through the chute. This door was installed solely for that purpose.
The floor consists of screened and compacted soil. The soil was compacted after every six inches of layers. It allows me to scrape the floor with a tractor bucket when cleaning out the manure annually without taking soil out. It allows me to drive T-posts in for my pens and jugs during lambing season. It turned out to be exactly the kind of floor I wanted.
Inside the barn, I have a four-feet high narrow wire mesh along the barn wall. It is mounted on two-by-fours. It is meant to protect the metal siding from being damaged by the sheep. In that regard, the mesh has worked out well. The one downside I am experiencing is the fact that on occasion a lamb’s ear tag gets caught in the mesh and rips out the tag. I have been giving it some thought if narrowly spaced two-by fours, perhaps up to a height of three feet, or a wider mesh would have worked as well to protect the siding.
The barn was primarily built for my lambing season.
Ulf Kintzel / White Clover Sheep Farm
To light the barn, I had four rows of six light bulbs installed. Initially, it turned out to be too little light during lambing season, especially when I wanted to document data in my notebook. The rather dim light also had a negative effect on me when working many hours during the cold and dark seasons in the barn. I considered a new lighting system, but advancement in technology saved me. A few years ago, I installed 27-Watt LED bulbs with 4000 lumens, which make the barn at night as bright as day.
To have the barn well-lit during the day, I opted for a three-feet high “Acrylic Skybelt” along the barn sides instead of windows. It is four and a half feet off the ground. This skybelt is made of Plexiglas, which is not clear. It is translucent. You can’t see through, but it allows plenty of daylight to enter.
Hay storage is another main reason for wanting a barn.
Ulf Kintzel / White Clover Sheep Farm
I opted against gutters. While that was not necessarily a wrong decision, it happens to be that the overhang stops exactly above my chute. Even during the lightest rain, I cannot work at the chute because the accumulating water drips right onto me, walking alongside the chute, sorting animals, taking notes. I am still considering gutters as a future addition.
The hay storage worked out exactly as planned. I store round bales, sitting on pallets, stacked three bales high. If the barn were any lower, I could no longer stack them three high and would lose valuable barn space.
The color, a seemingly insignificant issue, had to be the kind of typical red of old American barns, initially painted with a mixture of oil and rust and later with the paint Sears offered. The history of these red barns fascinated me. So, red it was.
