Architecture and its user - Cows and the Dairy barn

The evolution of dairy farming over the last century has been primarily driven by our society’s technological growth. Nutrition and genetics have made a huge difference in milk production and the health of cows throughout the years. For example, a cow now produces twice the amount of milk that it would have in the 1960’s. Yet, in this drive towards productivity and efficiency, there has been neglect in the care given to cows, who are often seen as machines for milk production. Architecture has a fundamental responsibility towards the health, safety and welfare of its users, whether they are human or animal. Cows are the main users of the barn and their well-being must be a priority. Architecture should be user-centric, regardless of the user’s ability to express themselves.

This thesis will attempt to demonstrate how to improve the space and well-being of cows in the modern dairy barn, while incorporating recent technology regarding animal care and milk production. How can we design for a living being that can’t talk? How can we properly answer the needs of an animal that we use for economical purposes? Currently, the main problems reside mostly in large-scale, industrial farms. Those farms are now operating like factories where there are large concentrations of animals. Large dairy farm production can be problematic for a cow’s well-being for various reasons; stress, exposure to high-levels of toxins from massive amounts of manure, waste management difficulties, or simply not having the possibility to move more than standing up or laying down. In order to focus fully on a particular subject and because it would be possible to extend the subject to infinity, this thesis will be limited to dairy farms and their main users; the dairy cow.

Measure 7 : Design for Wellness.

Since it is possible to improve the life of humans through the structures in which they live, learn and die, I thought it was possible to do the same for animals. What I learned is that it is very different to design for the purpose of exploitation, or production. How can we come up with a solution for the anxiety that cattles resent when they are confined into small spaces, with agressive lighting and poor hygene conditions.

My process for this project was to first read as much as I could about animal production. Discovering the evolution of farming from its apparition on our continent through the two World Wars and the Great Depression in between. I discovered that agriculture had evolved according to the human’s needs. Not to the animal’s. Our ways only started to change in the second half of the 20th Century, when some animal advocates like Temple Grandin started to question the way we were treating, housing, slaughtering our source of milk and meat. Through the health requirements of the cow,  and its behavior, it became possible to find a list of elements that could constitute mendatory prerequisites  into designing the dairy barn;

3 principles of designing for the Dairy cow :

1-Adaptation to the cow’s ethology ( behavior)

2- Adaptation to the cow’s sensory system

3-Adaptation to the cow’s health.

In order to really understand the reality of the cows, I started to get in touch with different farms. Some were organic , some had over 150 cows, some only 50, some were keeping their cows in their stalls and some where letting them roam free. I managed to visit 4 farms and did plans of the cow circulation, the farmer’s circulation, the way the manure was being evacuated from the building, the circulation of the milk after its been either harvested through a robot or a milking machine. I also analyzed the way a cow moves throughout the day and what she sees, with the help of a camera GoPro that I installed on Kelsie, one of the Chase’s cows. That video made me realize how slow a cow moves and that they are designed to look down. When visiting the four farms ( Smilling Hill Farm, Chase Organic Farm, Cyr Farm and Pineland Farm ) I learned that even though they were all very different in their ways of treating the cow or harvesting the milk, they all believed that their techniques were the right ones. It made me realize that no farm works the same and no barn looks the same either. They all adapt to their user’s in a certain way but sometimes the user changes, whether that user is the farmer or the cow. Whether they have robots or not. Whether they need to circulate with their tractor or not. Etc. After summing up the content of my research at those farms, I started to point out the elements that I thought were worth keeping for my futur design. Then, I started laying out all the program ( stalls, milking parlor, water system, manure system, milk tanks, etc.) into  a plan that would meet as much of the ethologic needs of the cow as possible, while meeting its health requirements and keeping the farmer’s needs in mind. A roof system that let the air flow through the building was needed and it needed to be adjustable to deal with temperature going from -25C to sometimes 30C. It also needed to let natural light in without being too direct, preferably diffused. The choice of the site was decided based on the site being located in a rural area where it could potentially be visited by other farmers in order to expand knowledge about adaptative design for dairy production. The site is also near Quebec city where the university can bring agronomy and agriculture students to visit the farm. The climate in this area can be very cold and also very warm which was a good constraint to get adapted too with my design. I found that incorporating elements of the gambrel roof to my thesis design seemed to make sense not only to take advantage of amount of space that the design allows, but also to make a direct connection between the present and the past. The Gambrel roof is very present in this area due to its French origin and I knew that I wanted to experiment with it for my project. When looking at the kind of plan I wanted my barn to have , based on a forced circulation where the cow has to go through a serie of «stations» in order to get fed and come back to the rest area, I decided to elongate part of the roof that was  over the cow’s resting area due to the fact that I needed more lighting in that part of the barn, as well as a steady ventilation. The idea of louvers to regulate the amount of light and wind that enters the building seemed like an economic and feasable idea. The diagrams will explain further more why the decision was made to continue on the project with this roof system. The floor of the building also has interesting particularities as it is elevated in certain areas to allow the liquids to flow in a predicted direction to be evacuated by the mecanized manure system.

When looking at the final proposed design, I see a barn that answers the needs of its main user, the dairy cow, but also its second user, the farmer. The roof system is an economical, affordable and durable approach for any dairy farm size. The cows are aloud to move and rest while the farmer obtain its milk production.

The barn has adapted to its user.