Full Specifications and Detailed Cost and Construction of the New Sixty-foot Circular Dairy Barn at the University. Saving of Round over Rectangular Barns. Notes on Several Round Barns on Dairy Farms.[A]
By W. J. FRASER, Chief in Dairy Husbandry
The planning, construction, and arrangement of farm buildings do not usually receive the thought and study these subjects warrant. How many dairymen have compared a circular, 40-cow barn with the common rectangular building containing the same area? How many understand that the circular structure is much the stronger; that the rectangular form requires 22 percent more wall and foundation to enclose the same space; and that the cost of material is from 34 to 58 percent more for the rectangular building?
In a community in which everyone is engaged in the same occupation, one person is likely to copy from his neighbor without apparently giving a thought as to whether or not there is a better way.
In a district of Kane county, Illinois, a certain type of dairy barn is used by nearly everyone, while in the next county a distinctly different type prevails, and the dairy barns of another adjacent county differ from those of either of the former, simply because the early settlers of this particular locality came from an eastern state and started building the style of barn then common in Pennsylvania.
In a certain community in Ohio where a milk condensing factory is located, a large number of farmers have barns 36 × 60 feet, with an “L” the same size. The loft of the “L” is used for the storage of straw, and the cows run loose in the lower portion. These barns are all built on practically the same plan and are usually of the same size, and this is the only community known to the writer where this form of barn is used in this manner.
This tendency to imitate emphasizes the fact that men do not exercise sufficient originality. Because most barns are rectangular is no reason that this is the best and most economical form.
[A] Special acknowledgment is made to Mr. H. E. Crouch and Mr. R. E. Brand for their assistance in working out the detailed data which are the bases for the economic comparisons of the round and rectangular barns made in this bulletin.