Welcome to The Dairy Mail

by Liza Burger

Cow housing is not just a super-sized barn. The art of housing dairy cows has evolved to where engineers, scientists and farmers have figured out a way to combine a number of factors to make farming profitable, practical and better for both animal and man.

Structural practicality, ergonomic design for cows according to behaviour patterns, manoeuvrability and physical needs must fit in with a bigger plan: Increasing milk production, making more money from the same number of cows, and less stress for animals and workers.

Cow housing has come a long way since those early beginnings and today, the specific needs of each farm can be met by adapting, planning and doing what is best for your four-legged tenants.

Mi casa, su casa
Some of the first “modern” housing for cattle was found in Europe at the foothills of the Alps. When winter came, the cattle were moved indoors. The cows were accommodated on the ground floor, while the family lived upstairs. This worked just fine for both animals and the farmer (the wife’s position remains unclear …) as the cows kept warm from the cold and in return provided plenty of body heat to warm the rest of the house.

The benefits were numerous: The cows were milked regularly and got fed without having to trudge up some hill to get to the best pastures. The farmer was close to his animals and could easily tend to the sick and see to it that his animals got the best care.

Better care brings more milk
Size and application might have changed over the past two hundred years or so, but the benefits of housed dairy cows have definitely grown.

For one, you don’t have to share your house with your herd anymore. Secondly, designs have improved to such an extent, that there are plenty of tried and tested options for you to apply to your farm’s specific requirements.

In South Africa the various climates can challenge even the most experienced farmer when it comes to the planning and design of what you want in a cow house. Heat and mud stress are the usual culprits, but very cold, wet and windy weather can also be factors. So, which components should you take into account when issuing the instructions to the builders and designers of this multi-million rand investment?

Egbert Roux and his sons, Dawid and Etienne, farm on Ethada, outside of Tarlton in Gauteng and are more than happy with their decision to build a proper cow house.

Three years ago they decided to take the plunge and invested approximately R3 million in cow housing for their Holstein herd, after they estimated huge losses due to wet weather and mud stress.

“Since building the cow house, we’ve seen almost no fluctuation in milk production when it rains. Before the housing we could see a drop in milk of 4-5 litres per cow related to mud stress every time we had downpours,” says Dawid.

Today Ethada has a milking herd of just more than 160 and a top group production average of 44 litres a day.

Hacking it in the Highveld
Dairy farming in the South African interior relies mostly on totally mixed ration (TMR) systems, extensive farming or a combination of TMR and extensive farming. Heat is a problem for most of the year and adds to the occurrence of mastitis and high somatic cell counts.

Providing shade is one option some farmers choose to implement and some, like Raymond Erasmus of Jasmyn near Hartbeespoort, has feeding sheds without beds or crates. The structure is very similar in appearance to larger cow houses, except that the cows have the freedom to move to the loafing area where they can lie down to ruminate.

Jasmyn has fully implemented the Afgri Kempen feeding system and the Jersey herd feeds and drinks only in the shed’s shade, which alleviates heat stress.

Back on Ethada, the benefits of a full-fledged housing system is evident. Uncharacteristically for the region, it rained a lot during autumn and early winter.

“Wet weather and mud was our first consideration when we finally decided to go ahead with our plans. We did our homework and travelled to see different cow house designs and applications, mainly in the Western Cape, where mud is also a big issue. We saw six different cow houses before deciding on how we wanted ours to look.”

The roof
Dawid explains that the basic roof structure needs to be the right height and angle to allow the hot air to escape through the opening at the apex. The direction of the elongated structure should also take prevalent wind direction into account to optimise ventilation.

The floor area, run-off and manure handling should be planned properly with the help of at least a technical draughtsman or an engineer, to have the different floor areas slant at the right degree to make feed handling, the cleaning of stalls and manure handling more efficient.

Walking surfaces
Ethada’s patriarch, Egbert Roux, says another aspect to pay attention to, is the finishing of the walking surfaces for the cows.

“We designed our own diamond pattern to avoid slippage. In the more confined space of a cow house as opposed to cows on pasture, you need to provide decent footing to allow for normal heat behaviour. If cows can’t mount each other, it makes your job of heat spotting extremely difficult.

“Cows on concrete need special hoofcare and we have our own hoofcare station on the farm to take care of any hoof problems and to do preventative hoof-trimming. We also use a formalin footbath a few times every week to help improve hoof health and hardness.”

Some farmers use rubber matting or even old conveyor belts in alleyways to lessen the stress on hooves.

Cooling down and staying calm
In Limpopo it is farmers such as Leon Thom, who farms near Gravelotte, and Joubert Fourie, who operates outside of Louis Trichardt, that prove the worth of cow housing in hot regions. Their farms differ substantially, but both of them use cow housing to keep their herds cool and well-managed.

Added to the structures, are industrial size fans that improve ventilation when necessary. Waterlines for spraying mist are also installed.

Cow brushes might seem like a luxury, but adds to quality of life and cow comfort – factors that relate to better milk production. Both Leon and Joubert have automatically rotating cow brushes in their cow houses.

Another “extra” that should be an essential part of cow house design, is the feeding surface. Dawid explains that plain concrete or even sealed concrete floors are rough on cows’ tongues: “We use smooth tiles on the feed lines with a rounded corner next to the feed wall. No feed gets stuck in the corners and the tiles are cleaned easily.”

Keep the cold out
Weather conditions to a large degree dictate the comfort of cows. With cow housing, you take back control and while it is a more expensive system to run as opposed to pasture-based farming, the benefits in cow health, comfort and production are huge.

With the latest drought in the Eastern, Southern and parts of the Western Cape, it was the TMR-farms with housing that suffered the least. These regions are known for rain and cold winters but, apart from uncomfortable winters, can also present extremely hot days.

Farms such as that of Fair Cape, consulted internationally to find the current best practice for cow comfort in the world and decided on an Israeli system.

The system includes under-cover and open-air sections, allowing free movement to the herd. The structure’s design channels the hot air up and out of the sheds through gaps in the roof, while allowing the breeze to improve ventilation and cool down the temperature.

The temperature inside Fair Cape’s cow houses is generally 10°C cooler than outside, while keeping the cows absolutely dry and mud-free.

Best beds
On Leon Thom’s farm, sawdust on sand provides easy-to-clean and comfortable areas for the Jerseys to lie down on. Although the use of wood shavings and sawdust is rather common in Europe and the northern parts of America and Canada, it is not always easy to get hold of a regular supply in South Africa. For Leon the nearby saw mills in Tzaneen makes the availability of coarse sawdust no problem.

A flush system uses waste water from the milking parlour to wash alleyways daily. In the warm Lowveld the rush of water is also a welcome relief to heat stressed cows and hooves are kept manure free.

In the Western Cape the housing at Fair Cape use scientifically formulated natural bedding of mud, straw and sawdust. Elsewhere sand is a favourite for bedding, while litter systems (of dried manure) are also common in South Africa. Ethada’s deep litter system works well on the Highveld.

“Alleys are scraped clean regularly and we’ve had no problems in managing hygiene in this way. We don’t use a flushing system and keep bedding dry,” explains Dawid.

He says that with the design of the house, they paid close attention to the angle at which the beds were built. “The beds are 2,5m long and the raised tail-wall keeps the rear end and tails of the cows off the alleyways. We angled the beds somewhat upward, so that the head is slightly raised to ensure good digestion.”

Money from manure
Cow housing not only makes manure management easier, but enables the farmer to reap the benefits of waste. Ethada’s manure pit at the far end of the housing, is the farm’s “fertiliser store”. Since the slurry dam has been in operation thanks to the cow house, they have been saving on fertiliser expenses.

“The last time we had to pay a fertiliser ­account, it cost us R120 000 a year. With the cow house and easy manure management system we save a lot! We have dryland Eragrostis fields and with the manure spreader’s help, we take off three cuttings a year.”

The next plan for Ethada is to investigate the profitability of a digester and generator fuelled by the methane gas from the pit.

However, a slurry pit is not the only way to handle manure. On Vos Grey’s farm in Mpumalanga, a tank with a suction pump is used to collect manure from the alleyways. Again, the cow house enables the farmer to better manage and use animal waste profitably.

Housing in deserts and on islands
In Mauritius a South African company has built a hurricane-proof cow house. Extreme measures in the designing of the roof and foundation was needed to plan and build this structure, making provision for heavy monsoon-like downpours and strong winds.

In Namibia the “super farm” of Namibia Dairies produces about 60 000 litres of milk per day. The latest technology in cow housing and milk parlour equipment was imported from South Africa and Israel to ensure the maximum production capacity.

The cow housing is designed to keep the free-range cows as cool as possible, with prevailing winds during the hot days and protected against mud in major downpours – both regular occurrences of the weather patterns in Mariental.

Like Ethada, the Namibian super farm has a comprehensive waste management system. Currently manure is only used as fertiliser, but in the long term a bio-digesting system is planned to produce electricity from manure.

Worth the while
The Rouxs all agree that the housing has paid for itself after three years.

“It is hard to determine to the exact cent, but our calculations show that the losses in milk production we used to have during wet weather or hot summer days are gone. Heat stress is still a factor, but much less so as the outside temperature is always 8°C warmer than under the roof of the cow house.

“In effect we have repaid the expenses of the structure by curbing potential losses and are now running a much more productive system with less hassle,” says Dawid.