When this old thread popped up I thought Dave was here with barn door pictures. Hope he sees this.

call him. @dave do you have an update?

We sure did finish the barn and have been using it like crazy. I'm so glad I built this barn! We had a lot of trouble out of those doors but we finally got them in and working, at a great expense. I'll go get some photos in a bit and post them here.

Took some photos. The sun is at a bad angle so it was pretty bright but these photos will do, I suppose.



I love being able to open the top and leave the bottom closed. We keep many of the doors half open like this all the time. It lets so much light and air into the barn,



We have these doors in the loft area, one in the front (here) and another in the back (not pictured). We store hay up there and can throw it down to the ring below.



The main doors are rollup doors and we've been SO happy we did that. Most of the year we have these roll up doors open all the time and we block the entrance so the cows can't walk in there. But it makes the barn wide open to full air and light and we just love it to pieces.

We have a milking area and if anyone would like to see that setup let me know and I'll get some shots.

I would love to see the milking area. I so miss that.
love all the doors and the way you use them. That barn is just beautiful.

That is a great looking barn, and of course we want to see the milking area.

It is indeed a good-looking and practical barn - good planning, even if it did take three years!

BEAUTIFUL Barn and yes, we want to see the milking area

Thank you Dave

I can see why you guys love it to pieces! It's purrrrrfect.

Milking area shots please.

Thank you so much for posting photos - it is indeed spectacular! If I may ask, how wide are the turnout doors? Also, how do you get the hay to the loft - are you using a block and tackle or conveyor or ???

I really like dutch doors - we keep ours open all the time, too.

Again, beautiful barn!

Dave did you buy the "dutch doors" or make them?? I would love to have dutch doors here to keep the dogs where I want them to be instead of where THEY want to be. but then Dixie would probably just jump over it. Better only one, I suppose, then three

OldGardener said:how wide are the turnout doors?

The doors are 4 feet wide, actually. I feel like I went over-kill on their width and I haven't regretted it. I love being able to bring wheelbarrows in any door.

gingin said:Dave did you buy the "dutch doors" or make them??

I had them made for me by a local metalworker. It was definitely challenging to get what I wanted but in the end with a lot of effort and going back and forth I was able to finally get the doors made to my liking. They are welded steel, powder coated. I feel like the doors will last a hundred years or longer. I don't mind telling you that I paid over $3,000 total for all six of the dutch doors, plus the two loft doors. Extremely expensive, but probably worth it in the end.

OldGardener said:Also, how do you get the hay to the loft - are you using a block and tackle or conveyor or ???

Well, that's a funny thing. Actually, we load up the square bales on the trailer and drive under the barn and I then just throw the bales into the loft and the children are up there grabbing and stacking them. It sounds like a hard thing, but the floor of the loft is only 9 feet off the ground so it's actually not a far throw, and I'm still not old enough yet that I can throw a bale up there. We also keep round bales but those don't go up there, we put them in the barn directly under the loft.

I'll take a bunch of interior pictures tomorrow.

I dunno..... sometimes you get what you pay for...... I think the expense on the doors will pay off. I really don't think it's that outrageous when you consider the size of the doors & the way they are made, what they are made of & the # of doors you got. I know the feeling of the "ouch/gasp" moment when you pay for something like that but afterward when you use them & enjoy the way they work you realize it wasn't a bad deal after all. Just IMHO.

Funny, I was thinking the same thing when I read that.

You get what you pay for!!

I don't think a 4 foot wide door is overkill. The year Gertie "the good cow" had twins, she actually brushed both sides of a 4' doorway when she walked through at the end - and she was a Jersey bred to a Jersey. Granted the calves were quite robust and on the bigger end but I still would never go smaller than 4' if I could help it. And it is nice having that extra room when doing chores...

I wouldn't have guessed that you just toss the bales up. Oh.... to be so young again

Do you feel that using a roll-up has advantages over double sliding doors? I am curious as to your thoughts on this. We have a roll-up on the workshop but the one time I stored grain and cubes in there, we had a raccoon scale the door and squeeze itself through the small opening up over the top. Needless to say, that critter proceeded to tear every bag open that same night and I think there were about 2 or 3 dozen bags. Although it was gone before morning, it left its tracks all over the floor. We did grease the top of the door well afterwards (thank goodness for crisco) and have not had an issue since.I am curious, though, if you feel there is an advantage to the roll-up.

As you may have guessed, I have a very special critter joining us soon and I am contemplating getting a new barn built. We currently have a barn that is half stone and half metal building that we use for sheep and goats but I am liking the idea of updating.the quarters. So... thank you for your patience in answering so many questions

That's interesting about the raccoon penetrating your barn via the roll-up door. In our case the rollup doors have absolutely no openings. They are rock solid and nearly air tight. I can't imagine an animal getting in when those doors are closed. We went with a commercial grade rollup door that is actually developed for the self-storage units.

Every sliding door I've ever seen was loose and hard to secure. Inconvenient to open from the inside and the way they swing the rock back and forth in wind is disruptive to a calm environment. They always seem to leak water into the barn, too. The rollup doors have none of these issues and when the door is open the door is all wrapped up into a nice tight barrel in the ceiling that's out of the way.

As promised, here's some more pics:

The rollup door in the closed position:



You can also see how we have a ring right in the entrance to the door. So during hay feeding season, we can put hay into that ring and it keeps the hay out of the rain. The cows just walk up to the barn and stick their heads right in and eat. The manure falls onto the porch that they are standing on and we scoop it up daily and put it into a pile for composting.



The barn is 36x36 with 12' on the west side, 12' under the loft, and 12' on the east side. The west side we divided into 3 12x12 stalls, divided with short walls. We use gates in the stall and then we can keep calves, etc, in there. You can also see here how we keep some round bales under the loft. Here is a photo of one of the 12x12 rooms:



And now here's the stanchion where we milk. It has gone through many evolutions and at this point I'm pretty happy with it.



We put feed in the box and the cow walks in and sticks her head through and starts eating. I can then close the right-side bar and drop the wooden block (which is on a hinge) to lock the beam in place. This prevents her from backing out while milking (which has happened before!)

We have a plywood wall there and although it wasn't necessary, we have it because it is on that wall that we hang our milking equipment to dry after we clean it. Since it's a solid wall, none of the animals can mess with the equipment.

The PVC pipe you see goes up to the ceiling and across the barn to where I have the vacuum pump. I situated the pump so far away because I wanted to milk in peace without having the pump roaring right next to me. It's nice to sit and chat with a child or two while milking.

So you can see my little stool there. There is an opening to the stanchion from the stool and I have perfect access to the udder. I could hand milk with ease but the machine sure makes the job faster.

Looks great & like you have everything all worked out. I can smell the hay. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Very efficient set up.

Thanks for the pictures! It looks great. If you do a good job the first time, with good quality materials, you don't have to redo it, and your steel doors will be good for the life of the barn and then some. I like the idea of a roll up door, and the way you have the cow eating from the conveniently located ring. We have some sliding doors on tracks on a storage shed. They are noisy in wind, and do not fit tight. When not opened for weeks at a time during the summer, paper wasps build nests in the tracks. I also deal with much larger and heavier ones at the neighbor's barn during lambing season. Their barn is old and saggy, causing the doors to be sticky because the tracks have warped.

How much do those bales weigh? The ones you throw.