Make a good study of many barns at short range; note what features are good, what faulty, what useless; by this means much will have been learned and many mistakes will be avoided. Decide approximately the capacity which will be required. First, draw a rectangular diagram of the barn, then proceed to the proposed location and take a seat; make a most careful study of the approach, the incline of the land, note where fences and gates will be necessary, where and how the water is to be introduced—in fact, take in the whole problem of the environment of the proposed structure. Then imagine that you see the barn, and that you have just arrived from town some stormy night with your wife and baby; in imagination help them out of the carriage. Imagine you have a span of young, restless horses which you have driven to get them used to city ways before selling them. That will make you think of a platform onto which the family may step from the carriage while you are holding the colts. Consider how many big doors you will have to open before the colts are made comfortable for the night. Are the democrat wagon and the colts to be kept on the same floor, or one up-stairs and the other down? Or is the carriage in one building situated four rods from the horses? How many gates and doors have you opened and closed since you arrived? Think it all over, and then go to the house and talk it over with your wife, for some day she may drive to town, and on her return find that both you and the farm hands are in the field, and that there is no one to help her put the team away. After imagination has pictured the conditions which are likely to prevail, then begin to cautiously modify the rectangular diagram; surround it with dotted lines, which may represent roads, fences, gates, lanes, and adjunct buildings. Then take a rest; lay the sketch away for a time; study barns in the neighborhood; council with the wife again, for she may have to go to the barn often. After a year of faithful and intelligent planning you may be able to place a well digested rough sketch of the proposed structure in the hands of a draughtsman.
WATER SUPPLY
It would seem to be unnecessary to repeat the axiom, “No water, no plant or animal life,” but so many buildings, both public and private, are located and constructed before the problem of supplying an ample, perennial supply of potable water is solved, that it seems necessary to briefly treat this subject.
Several public institutions with which I have been familiar have erected expensive structures before supplying water for them. Three and sometimes five separate attempts were made to furnish water for the use of the plant, none of which were entirely successful.
The amount of water needed and the conditions under which it must be secured are so variable that few specific directions can be given. One simple, certain and cheap way of securing water for the barn is usually neglected. In some sections of the South, by reason of peculiar geological formations, the practice of constructing pools or storage reservoirs has become common. A slight depression or draw or swale is selected and dammed by using the earth from the bottom of the proposed pool and from the higher land adjoining. No stone or wood is necessary to support the dam. The only precaution necessary is to have a broad base (see [Fig. 7]), and to provide sufficiently large outflows or spillways, one on either end of the dam, that the pool may never rise higher than within two feet from the top of the dam. The surface soil, if it contains much vegetable matter, should be scraped off a strip three to four feet wide and as long as the dam, and the depression filled with earth—clay is best—that contains little or no organic matter. If the bottom of the dam where it meets the normal earth is constructed with sods, or other material which will decay, in time the water will find its way through the porous earth.
The pools of the South, to which reference has been made, sometimes have an extreme depth of 12 to 15 feet, and may cover a fraction of an acre or several acres. I have known one of these pools to furnish water for a hundred head of cattle during a long continued drought. It is difficult to explain why more pools, lakes and fish ponds are not constructed. Possibly the reasons are that there is a prejudice against them, and well there may be, since they are usually so shallow that the water becomes impure, and since it is not generally realized that a substantial dam can be erected by the use of earth alone. If it is thought advisable not to allow the animals to go to the pool, it may be fenced, since it is not expensive to lay a pipe in the dam, when it is being constructed, on a level with the bottom of the pool, the outer end of the pipe being furnished with a ball and cock to regulate the flow of water into the trough.
Usually it is not advisable to build cisterns for storing water for barn use, since they are too expensive if built as large as needed. A cow requires from forty to eighty pounds of water daily in the summer. If sixty pounds be taken as the average, it will be seen that it would require a cistern of three hundred and fifty barrels capacity to supply a herd of fifty animals for one month. In some cases the water of a stream or well may be so highly charged with the products of magnesian limestone as to produce goitre, in which case soft water should be supplied for the horses.
Streams or springs are often available for summer, but they seldom supply ideal water conditions in winter. Young animals, and especially cows in milk, should not be required to drink water at a low temperature or be forced to travel long distances for it in cold weather. The only really satisfactory method of supplying the domestic animals with water is to bring it into the barn, and if the water in the pipes is not under pressure, a small storage tank may be placed in a mow and surrounded by straw. Such storage tank may be built, if small, out of rough 2-inch plank, spiked together, or, if large, of 2- by 4-inch scantling, spiked flatwise one upon the other; in both cases the tank is lined with galvanized iron. All barns provided with steam boilers should also be provided with a few small steam pipes leading to the water boxes, that the drinking water of the animals may be raised in winter to 98° Fahr.
Animals do not relish lukewarm water in the winter, but they really enjoy hot water. The economy and safety of using hot drinking water will justify the expense of providing it. This is especially true in the winter dairy and when horses have severe winter work. An overheated, tired horse may drink all the hot water he desires without danger. Water taken into the stomach at 40° Fahr. must absorb heat enough from the system to raise it to about 99°. To do this food must be burned, as literally as coal is burned in the boiler to heat water. It requires more units of heat to raise a pound of water one degree in temperature than any other substance except two or three of the gases.
There are now so many styles of really good air motors or wind mills, that water from wells may be pumped at a minimum cost into storage tanks. There is no longer any excuse for pumping water by hand for any considerable number of animals, nor for compelling them to seek water in cold weather at some distant stream. As has been said, there are many ways of securing a supply of water for the barn. The details of accomplishing the results desired are many, but the result should always be the same: an abundant supply of water within the barn under more or less pressure. If this is not secured the plans of a barn, as a whole, are unsatisfactory.