Donal John O’Neill built a slatted shed on his Atlantic coast farm in Gour, Castletownbere, Co Cork. Donal is a part-time fisherman and spends most of the winter out at sea. “Our base is in Killybegs in Donegal and we could be fishing anywhere from the coast of northwest Scotland to the south coast of Ireland,” Donal said.

He is married to Patrice and is farming with his father John and mother Noreen. The O’Neills keep 25 suckler cows and also sell in-calf maiden heifers annually. There were a number of reasons for investing in the new facilities, but the main driver was to save labour during the winter when he is away fishing. The cows calve in July and August so the winter work normally just entails feeding.

The shed is four bays, double-sided with two 8ft deep slurry tanks. All the construction work including concrete tanks and shed erection was carried out by James Walsh Engineering from Mallow, Co Cork. The ground falls off at one side of the shed so the slurry tank walls are 16in wide with extra steel reinforcement. Before this shed was built the O’Neills wintered cattle in a cubicle shed and slurry was stored in an outdoor slurry pit. This system was labour intensive and the cubicle setup was coming to the end of its days, therefore the new shed was needed to house cattle with less labour needed.

There are eight pens. There is a creep area on one side for calves. The other side houses the maiden heifers. The gang slats are 14ft 9in and each pen holds seven cows comfortably. The pens have Easyfix slat mats fitted; interlocking mats are used in the creep area. Donal fitted shut-off valves so he can turn off the water to each individual water trough if he wants. The feed barriers do not open and cattle can only enter pens through the side doors at either end of the shed. “If I want to take heifers out of the middle pen, I can close the gates across the end pen and keep cattle separate when they are being moved across,” said Donal.

At the back of the creep area there is a cattle crush. This is two bays long and 28in wide. There is an automatic headgate and the crush is designed to make artificially inseminating cows as straightforward as possible. Adjustable pipe creep gates were used between the slatted pens and the creep area. The pipes are spring-loaded and can be adjusted to suit the size of the calves. When cattle are going through the crush the calves can be locked into the slatted pens.

The roof sheeting was supplied by Cembrit and is fibre cement. Spaced sheeting is used on some of the roof area while lapped sheeting is used where calves are lying. The O’Neills went to the extra expense of fibre cement sheeting because there can be a lot of sea fog in the area which can result in a build-up of condensation. All the steel in the main structure was galvanised as the salty air is very corrosive and every protection is needed to increase the structure’s lifespan.

The central feed passage is 18ft wide. “We visited a lot of sheds before building our own, and not one farmer said their central passage was too wide,” said Donal. He said the extra space allows plenty of room to push in silage without hitting off the bale on the opposite side. Bales can also be kept at a distance from the feed barriers because of the extra width. Headlocking barriers supplied by O’Donovan Engineering are used on one side of the shed. The stub walls are 2ft high. Normally stub walls are lower but Donal wanted to prevent cows pulling silage inside the pens.