When building a new barn, dairyman Hendrik Eggink sees value in getting input from other people who don’t have to “write the check” for the project.

“The one writing the check wants to keep it cheaper than he should,” Eggink explained during the April Hoard’s Dairyman webinar. Eggink farms with his family at Deluur Dairy near Deckerville, Mich.

Those outside opinions helped give Eggink balance and a long-term perspective when he built a new transition cow barn in late 2017. He acknowledged that they didn’t spare a lot of cost when it came to putting up that facility, but it was money well spent.

“I believe it paid itself back very quick, as we saw the results once we moved into this barn,” he shared.

The four-row barn is mechanically ventilated with curtain sidewalls and many fans. The sand-bedded freestalls are 8 feet long and 54 inches wide on the side of the barn where the cows are housed; the stalls for heifers are 48 inches wide.

“Cows want to stretch out,” noted Mark Fox, D.V.M. Fox is a partner at Thumb Veterinary Services and works with Deluur Dairy. “Typically, the more space we provide for them, the better,” he added.

Beyond spacious stalls, the barn is also understocked with plenty of bunk space — about 3 feet per cow. Eggink doesn’t want there to be competition for resting or eating space in the prefresh or postfresh groups. “If you get those two parts right, you can get away with overstocking down the road,” he shared.

The barn also features plenty of LED lights. “I think you want that in a prefresh barn,” Eggink said, explaining that they move cows into the maternity pens just prior to calving, so it is important that the people monitoring the barn can see the cows well.

The barn does not have headlocks, and one benefit of that is it makes the facility very quiet, creating a relaxing atmosphere. They also placed a cement wall between the freestalls and the maternity pens to give the calving cows more privacy.

Cows are brought into this barn 16 to 24 days prior to calving. Heifers enter the barn 28 to 35 days prefresh. Eggink said they built the barn with their calving peaks in mind, which means most of the year, the barn will not be full.

“It is a hard pill to swallow,” Fox said in regard to oversizing a barn that much. However, for this part of a cow’s life cycle, he said it pays off very well. To learn more from Eggink and Fox, view the April Hoard’s Dairyman webinar, “The factors that help Deluur Dairy excel at transition cow care.”