Cleaning Calf Barns - Do you have a plan?
One thing that has changed over the years, when it comes to raising calves specifically, is that we are bringing more and more calves inside every year. We have heard time and time again that people's opinion on bringing calves inside is generally, “Calves being outside is way better for them but for worker comfort we decided to build a barn.”
Now, we completely disagree with that, calves being outside isn’t better for them. Each system comes with its own set of challenges, and just like when you do anything new, you will have a time where you need to learn things and learn to manage things that you never have before.
Something that takes a large adjustment for many people is figuring out how they are going to clean inside. With huts, it’s easy. You move the hut, scoop out the bedding, lime, pressure wash the hut at a different location, and it’s ready for a new calf. With a calf barn, it’s not always that simple, and many times, it can be overlooked.
When you start raising calves in a barn, there are quite a few added factors that people will sometimes either not consider before building, or planned on it being better and now that the barn is up, it’s not going to work like you thought it should.
Some challenges that you might find in your calf barn that you didn’t find with huts are:
Always having calves in the barn. It’s hard to do a good job cleaning pens when there’s always calves around. It’s easy to move a hut and pressure wash it, but how do you clean the walls, the floor, and the ceiling when you have calves in the next pen over.
Drainage. This is one thing we hear over and over and over again, we need more drainage or the drainage isn’t right for us to wash in the barn with water, etc.
Cleaning out positive pressure tubes. That something that you would never have to do in a calf hut, and many times it’s overlooked.
Here are a few ways to manage these potential hurdles in your calf barn cleaning protocols.
Having calves around all the time and trying to do a good job cleaning is pretty contradicting. We pressure wash everything in the pen, every time. We haven't found a difference in calf health from pressure washing with calves in the barn and not. There is research to suggest that it’s a problem, but we chose to have clean pens and take the risk that comes with pressure washing with calves in the barn. One way that we have managed this is by creating curtains. They are tarps that hang on PVC poles, that protect the calves and the clean pens from getting wet or dirty. We also make sure the employees understand how important it is to be careful with where they are washing.
Have a plan for the water. Add more drainage, bigger drains, bigger drain pipes, etc. Make everything bigger than you think it should be. In our old baby barn, we have 6” drain pipes, and that comes with some challenges. In our new baby barn, we went with 10” drain pipes and the thought of clogs never crosses our minds. This is especially important if you are worried about bedding getting into the drains. One way that we keep our old baby barn from getting clogged up is by creating “flush” systems. We place a bowling ball over the opening of the exit hole, and only pull it when we have enough water to create a flush type system.
Cleaning your PPT. The best way to manage this is to take them down and throw them in the garbage. Now, if you paid $7,000 for your tubes, you probably aren’t going to do that, so how the heck are you going to clean those things. Hard work is how they get cleaned. You need to take them down, flip them inside out, scrub them, sanitize them, and then hang them back up properly. That sounds like a lot of messing around, but so is treating calves because there’s dust and disease built up in the tubes that you can’t see or clean.
If you don’t want to pressure wash with calves in your calf barn, and if you don’t have good drainage, you are going to need a different plan for your sanitation program.
We recently toured at a large calf ranch, and I inquired about how they clean their huts, the answer? “We don’t!”..... What?!
Talking with them more, they literally don’t clean their huts! They take the calves out, move the huts back one spot, scoop the bedding out, lime, spray the huts with DK-ll, and put them back for the next calf. They said if there is a calf that makes a real mess they will wash it, but they have found no difference in using brand new huts and cleaning with DK-ll between calves, in terms of calf health.
We can attest to DK-ll being our favorite calf barn sanitation product too. We pressure wash everything in our calf barns, but we also use DK-ll with great results. We have also had tremendous luck with spraying calf pens down with DK-ll while calves are in the pen to help reduce disease pressure.
So, as you can see, there are a lot of ways to get the job done, but we like to say, “do your best and DK-ll the rest!”
If you want to give DK-ll a try in your calf barn, give us a shout!