Quote from JoshuaGA "How is your freestall barn set up? Appears like you have a second barn on the front where you cant drive straight through to feed, is that correct. If that is the case, what is ahead of the freestall barn, close up pens or ???. How are you handling the manure out of that barn? One more question, do you still use your Harvestore silos? I see a bunker in one of your pictures, I assume corn silage. TIA. Interesting to see operations up north, clash so much with the thinking on barn design down here."

Josh,

My parents built the freestall in 1970.  It is a Agway designed barn, which I believe is a Penn State style barn (version I).

It is a 4 stall row barn with a 5' feed bunk in the center.  The parlor is located in the front corner.  A wagon could fill the bunk by driving thru the one cow alley (in the manure).  The bunk also had a shuttle feeder.   The barn was setup for 1 group of cows with grain fed in the parlor, silage fed in the bunk and dry hay fed across the back of the barn.  We eventually stopped grain in the parlor, fed the grain in the bunk with the forage, divided the bunk for 2 groups and added more tower silos '74, '75 & '78.  We fed corn silage, haylage, soy 48 and by '78 HiMo corn.

Today,  the parlor is still in the 1st freestall.  The old freestall is used for the fresh/treated milking group and as of this weekend, has the tailender group.  The old stalls were previously used for preg heifers and dry cows.  We currently need the space for milkers.

Edit- Old freestall used to be a scrape-off ramp and daily spread.  Fall 94, we built a lagoon and reception pit.  Because we use sand for freestall bedding, the barn pit and lagoon we built to make it easier to remove settle sand.  Not perfect, but workable.  We have the setup to load the spreader from the barn pit or send the pit to the lagoon.

For forage storage, we pile corn silage and haylage.  The harvey's are used for rolled Hi Mo shelled corn.

Here's some picts,,

Early '90's aerial

fall '94 reception pit

Barn pit and transition from 4 row to 6 row.

Road view of the 2 barns

pump station, load out or send to lagoon

Lagoon fall '94, concrete strips to allow sand removal

Silo view of silage piles. Foreground is haylage.  Upper right pile is corn silage.

Excavation is for the new location of the forage bunk.