Calf Barn Design to Optimize Health and Ease of Management.

This article offers general calf barn design recommendations to optimize calf health gleaned from clinical and research experience in a Midwestern US climate. Barn components that are discussed include sizing the barn, ventilating the facility, and providing a clean, deeply bedded, dry area for the calf. In addition, considerations for maximizing labor efficiency and reducing the spread of disease by caregivers are discussed.

Designing Automated Milking Dairy Facilities to Maximize Labor Efficiency.

As automatic milking systems grow in popularity in North America, questions about how to design the barn to improve labor efficiency arise. Multiple considerations such as cow flow traffic type, robot positioning within the pen, the number of cows per pen, and how cows are managed around the robots must be discussed during the barn planning period. This article focuses on barn design and pen layout to maximize labor efficiency in herds with single-box automatic milking systems.