Having a barn is one thing, but enjoying working in it is another. A barn can serve many purposes according to your needs, but many small-scale farmers use it for horses and other livestock. You need equipment and tools to help you tend to your animals and make the barn work easier.
Barn maintenance involves a lot of work, from tidying the inside to cleaning the outside and dealing with insects and rodents. Nonetheless, completing indoor barn work requires adequate lighting. You can achieve this by covering the walls with a barn curtain instead of rigid material such as wood.
However, do not strain yourself. Make your work easier with the following essential barn equipment.
Load Dumper
A barn involves ferrying various loads from one point to another. For instance, you must carry animal waste from the barn to the dumping site. For this matter, you need multipurpose equipment like a load dumper or a wheelbarrow.
A wheelbarrow will serve you significantly around the barn, from moving straw and hay to carrying floor dirt. You can find wheelbarrows of all makes, shapes, and sizes. Furthermore, the wheels come in varying sizes, meaning you can choose one that suits your needs.
Additionally, you can purchase a wheelbarrow from as cheap as $80 to over $200. But, the higher the price, the better the quality and model. However, a wheelbarrow with a plastic bed is recommended for a barn since it does not rust from animal urine.
Barn Fans
Proper airflow in a barn is just as crucial as the building itself; without sufficient air circulation, the barn won’t serve its intended purpose. When planning a barn layout, farmers need to ensure there are ample windows and barn fans. Also, there needs to be an opening in the ceiling to provide proper ventilation for the animals.
Additionally, consider incorporating a sliding door for increased flexibility when it comes to allowing fresh air into the structure, especially when the animals are outdoors. Spacious barns with high-pitched roofs typically have natural ventilation, promoting unrestricted airflow within the building.
Hay Elevators
It is winter, and you want to put up hay for your animals. You can simplify that job by using a hay elevator. However, it would help to choose your hay equipment carefully to ensure it serves the purpose well.
Several options will likely overwhelm you, especially in length. When choosing your perfect elevator, it would help to consider the bale chute and transport kit.
Hay Mowers
A hay mower is another must-have piece of equipment for your barn, especially if you have a compact tract and wish to make hay instead of buying. Below are some factors to consider when selecting a hay mower.
The three main hay mower types are drum, disc, and sickle bar mowers.
Sickle Bar Mower
Initially pulled by horses, a sickle bar mower is machine-operated and works with a reciprocating back-and-forth action. The best thing is that you can use this mower to cut hay for your animals and other mowing purposes around your home. In addition, its design makes it suitable as it requires minimum horsepower.
Disc Mower
A disc mower differs from a sickle bar in using rotating discs instead of back-and-forth blades. The significant advantages of this mower are the high cutting speed and the ability to handle lodged hay smoothly without logging.
Drum Mower
The primary difference between a drum mower and the first two is that its “drums” are powered from a gearbox at the top instead of being powered from the cutter bar. Moreover, they are the most durable of the three and do not require hydraulic power.
Hay Tedders
A tedder is a piece of equipment you can use to spread hay in the field. Spreading the hay helps air it, and exposing the underside to sunlight to speed up drying. It grabs the hay in rotary motion and throws it to the back of the machine.
You can find a tedder of any size from six inches to over 20 inches wide. While you may do the work by hand, a machine will make it faster and more effective. Moreover, if you are using a drum mower other than one with a conditioning system, a machine will do the spreading better.
Hay Balers
There are various types and sizes of hay balers, but you can choose according to the size of your tractor. For instance, opting for a big square or round baler is inadvisable if you have a small tractor. The following are the common types of hay balers.
Mini Round Baler
Also called a roto-baler, is one of the best choices for small-scale farmers to get hay into the barn. It works almost like the bigger version. It rolls the hay into a specific size and then wraps it with a net or twine before ejecting it into the machine’s back.
However, when shopping for a mini round baler, you must check if it has the gathering wheels on the pickup sides. One of the many benefits of using a mini round baler is that it requires only 15 horsepower to run.
A Square Baler
The square baler is the oldest, though with slight improvements. It has tines that collect loose hay and stuff it into a chamber with a plunger that pushes the hay back and forth to create compressed rectangular chutes.
These balers work pretty fast and can drop a hay bale every ten seconds so that you can make over 1000 hay bales within a few hours. Like other barn tools and equipment, you must be keen when choosing a square baler.
Barn work is endless and sometimes hectic, but you must do it to keep your animals safe. You can run your small farm effortlessly with the essential barn equipment and tools mentioned in this blog post. Additionally, you should consider quality over the equipment’s quoted price.