Tips To Consider While Building Hay Sheds

If you are associated with farming then you need to hire livestock, and you must install hay sheds in your farm to store such livestock. Though there are so many ways to store hay bales and each of them offers its own set of benefits, there is nothing like sheds for storage of hay bales and straws. If they are left uncovered or stored outside they are likely to get affected by weather conditions, like water penetration, wind or storms. This will also lead to loss in nutrient value of hay which will ultimately affect the health of your livestock.  

 

Tips to Choose The Best Hay Sheds For Livestock

To avoid all such problems, farmers have now realized that it is a wise decision to invest in building good hay shed for efficient storage of hay bales and straw. If you are also planning to build hay sheds then you need to consider few things which we have listed below.  

1. Strategize about Access to Shed: The most important thing that every farmer needs to think of while building hay sheds is how they will be getting hay bales in and out of the shed. Mostly farmers use machinery like tractors to bring out hay from shed and load it back. So, if your shed is equipped with poles in between then tractors will not be able to move easily and you cannot use forklift to load and unload. Therefore, you must choose a design that doesn’t require construction of poles, so that you get ample open space.
2. Proper Ventilation: While building hay sheds keep in mind that it has open sides that facilitate air circulation and cross ventilation. This is important point because if sheds don’t have any feature for ventilation, then moisture and heat will build up inside the shed which will destroy the feed kept inside. So, make sure that sheds have at least one open side to allow fresh air circulation.
3. Decide Proper Location For Sheds: Deciding about the location of hay sheds needs to be thought thorough. The optimal location would be such that is close to paddocks and you can easily access your machinery also from there. However, you need to check about the ground condition beforehand whether it is wet or not, or it has any water drainage issues, otherwise you will end up facing water retention around your sheds. If you have any plans of building one more shed in near future, then make sure to build it at some distance. Apart from that, you must choose the best material for the sheds which are fire resistant. Most of these sheds are made of metal and they can last long.
4. Size of Shed: While building hay sheds always take into consideration both your present and future needs. The design and construction of shed should be such that it is able to fulfill your current needs very well, along with offering you the facility to expand it when required as per your future needs. The shed should be structurally strong and sturdy enough so that you can easily add another bay in future, if required.

By far now, you must have been convinced that building sheds is far more beneficial than just changing a bay in design for a quick fix. Sheds always give you long-term benefits by reducing your transportation costs, labor costs, gives you tax benefits, protects your machinery and tools from harsh weather conditions and prevents nutritional loss of hay and straws. All these benefits are sufficient enough to direct you for building hay sheds in your farm too.    

 

 

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