Many drystock farmers now have off-farm jobs that really limit the amount of time available for working on the farm. With time growing scarce, more farmers are opting to put facilities in place that will make their farm chores as straightforward as possible. Last year, Paul Devine completed a four-bay beef shed in Loughrea, Co Galway, for housing bull weanlings. Every year, Paul buys in continental bulls, castrates them and finishes them the following year indoors.

Pictures one and two

Figure 1 shows a plan view of the shed with the approximate dimensions. Building contractor Michael Kelly did all the steel work for the shed, including penning, the roof and the doors. There are two feed passages on each side of the shed and the penning is situated in the centre. The shed is 19.2m long and 13.2m wide. It is 3.6m high at the eaves and 5.6m high at the apex. The sheeting was all supplied by Tegral. The site was considerably hilly, which meant excavating a lot of clay from one end of the site to the other end.

Paul Kelly Construction from Athlone, Co Roscommon, carried out the concrete work. Because the land falls away from one side of the shed, a retaining wall had to be built to support the tank. The retaining wall is 8ft high at one end and this goes down to 2ft at the other end. This extra concrete added considerably to the costs.

Pictures three and four

Inside, the shed has four slatted pens. Each pen is 4.8m long and 5.6m wide. There are 14’6” slats used sitting above an 8ft deep slurry tank. Cattle can be fed on both sides of the pen which means there is reduced chances of competition at feeding time. Two La Buvette nose drinkers are used between the pens. Paul says he is very happy with them because they are heavy-duty and easy to clean out if they do become dirty. The walls of the shed are all mass concrete and are 2.4m high and 10” thick.

Picture five

The most interesting feature in the shed is the cattle race located in the lefthand feed passage. As mentioned earlier, Paul wanted to be able to handle cattle quickly and easily whenever required. He put in a 9.6m long race in the shed.

By opening the feed barrier from the first pen, cattle can be easily directed into the race. Paul can do this by himself without any help. When he is finished working with cattle in the race, he moves the next pen of cattle to the first pen that was previously emptied.

By moving each pen up in sequence, the cattle leaving the race will enter the last pen that was just emptied. Eventually when each pen of cattle goes through the race they will end up back in the original pen that they came from. Figure 1 shows how cattle move through the race and return to their pen in a clockwise fashion.

Picture six

Paying contractors to transport water to sheds to aid agitation is common on a lot of farms. Paul set up a pipe system so that he can harvest rainwater from the shed roofs and divert it to the slatted tank. When there is enough water in the tank, he simply diverts the water to a shore.

Cost

Table 1 shows the costs for all the work carried out. In total, the project cost €55,947 excluding VAT. The shed, the penning, the doors, the crush and sliding doors cost €24,800 including VAT. The concrete costs were a little higher than you would typically expect for this type of shed but this was due to a difficult site and the need for a retaining wall.

Similarly, excavation costs were higher because the site was hilly and took more time to lay out. Paul says he was expecting costs to be higher in certain areas due to the site. Despite the extra costs he is delighted with how the shed turned out and the workmanship carried out.

“Since building the shed, I increased stock numbers, I can make better use of early grass because the shed is on an out-block that typically would be grazed later,” according to Paul. Most of all the shed has cut down labour and made life easier for him.