778 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 



cows. Too much care in lighting and ventilating the dairy barn 

 cannot be taken. These factors need more attention for dairy 

 animals than for any other class of animals because the cows are 

 confined most of the time for a large portion of the year. If 

 housed in a damp, ill-lighted and ill-ventilated barn, the dairy cow is 

 very likely to become diseased. 



Round barns are fairly economical so far as building mate- 

 rial is concerned. However, they are nearly always dark and the 

 usual barn odors in them are not confined. Therefore, they are 

 generally not desirable for dairy cattle. 



One story barns may easily be made practically ideal, from the 

 standpoint of light and ventilation, but are rather expensive from 

 the standpoint of storage. The one story barn with a monitor roof, 

 while excellent in summer and in warm climates, is cold, hard to 

 ventilate and impractical on the Iowa farm. 



Two story barns, if tightly ceiled and provided with proper 

 window space and ventilation, are very practical on the Iowa farm 

 where the storage room is needed. 



The covered barnyard or double stabling system decreases the 

 amount of labor required. It must have great quantities of bedding 

 and, if adopted, the cows must be in small lots and dehorned. 



CONVENIENCE. 



At best a great deal of labor is involved where many cows are 

 milked, but if care and judgment be exercised in locatin.f? and 

 building much can be gained by way of convenience in eliminating 

 the work. 



It should be the rule in building for cows to face them outward. 

 Impractical dairymen nearly always make the mistake of facing the 

 cows toward each other, and in defense of their faddish idea state 

 that the cows look better and that feeding operations are lessened. 

 But this is a mistake. The experienced dairyman will say that the 

 cows look better facing outward because he first looks at the 

 milking end of the animal. 



In barns where cows face inward the herd must be divided when- 

 ever driven into the barn, half of them entering a door on one 

 side and the remainder on the other side. Even though the alley- 

 ways back of the cows are quite wide, the walls of the barn be- 

 come splashed and besmeared with manure and the tidy dairyman 

 who prides himself on cleanliness must spend hours keeping these 

 walls scrubbed. Two alleyways become dirty each day and must 

 be scrubbed and it is a great task to clean the manure from two 

 sides of the barn and carry bedding all around the barn to be 

 placed in the stalls. The task of conveying the milk to the milk 

 room is doubled, also, because there can be no one convenient 

 central point to weigh the milk. 



When the cows face outward all enter one large door and seek 

 their stalls; a litter carrier running between the rows of stalls 

 will convey all manure directly from the barn. It is impossible 

 for cows to splash walls with manure. There is only one alley- 

 way to be scrubbed and all waste may be quiskly swept up. The 

 personal experience gained by the writer on dairy farms, where 



