Farmer Dries Lahousse from Elverdinge is active in arable farming and breeds poultry, but also owns a dairy barn housing 170 cows. Amongst those are also several older animals that have already produced more than 100,000 liters of milk. In order to maintain production throughout the year for all cows, including the oldest ones, he recently invested in basket fans, for extra cooling on top of the natural ventilation.
Dries’s barn consists of two parts, one measuring 50 by 18 meters and the other measuring 40 by 26 meters. “It is not a big barn, considering it’s housing so many animals, and the orientation isn’t optimal, which can rapidly lead to high temperatures in the summer months”, says Wout Goderis of Goderis CowCompany. “However, it is too large to use a tube ventilation system efficiently. That’s why we have opted for seven big basket fans above the stalls, that start automatically when the barn temperature rises too much.”
