Barn Insulation Update
One year later….
December 2022 brought a crazy polar vortex to middle Tennessee and the quail barn was not insulated and we had so many issues. The quail cage waterers froze and broke. We used dixie cups nestled in the feed troughs to water the quail but we couldn't keep up and we lost many to stress. The barn pen auto water system froze and that water leaked onto the concrete and made a wet mess that couldn’t be cleaned at that moment. I swore I would not do that again and we made some changes.
The first decision was to spray. a closed cell insulation inside. After much consulatation with the foam companies and spec sheets, we decided it was safe for the birds after 24 hours. Moving a few thousand birds in and out was a job plus all the paraphanalia was crazy. Huge job! Since we had to move birds in and out, the weather played a role and after several delays and a spray rig malfunction, it was finished in 2 days. We did have to move the birds inside at night but we left the big doors open and hoped no predators noticed. After a couple days of cleaning and rearranging and dump runs, we finally came up with a beautiful(to me), functional barn.
The barn pens have pvc and cup waterers and they were insulated right over and have had zero issues, other than the birds laying on them. The quail were cooler in the summer, in 2022 it was 117 in the barn. In August 2023, it never went over 90. Now we are in the throes of another polar vortex and last check with windows open, the inside was 64, outside is 20. Yes we are at the beginning of it, I will update at the end of the week if anything changes.
As far as some of my products I use, one we really like is the retractable hoses we put in for indoor cage filling. Many time, its the littlest things to make me happy, lol. The Hatching Time quail cages are on wheels, they make clean up a breeze! We wheel them to the tractor bucket, dump treys, sweep floors and roll back. For the brooders, they need warm water but we don’t have a water heater out there yet, so I use old lemonade gallon jugs, we have 4 that we fill up and just let sit in the warm room to fill the brooder waterers, easy and cheap! We get feed delivered by the pallet, we got some U-boat dollys from shut down Dollar General stores and we can move feed around easily. You can see a picture of one here.
The doors on my barn pens were salvaged from a mobile home, as were the screens that I use to cover the brooders. The water tank used for the auto water system was salvaged from an old RV. The lighting system is from Amazon, which I use affiliate links, just LED strips on cheap Christmas timers. We use feed bags for garbage bags in the barn. We use dollar tree dog bowls in the barn pens. We have many uses for plastic coffee cans. One is a feed scoop. A button quail hut. A water bowl for birds. A screw holder. A tiny trash can on the work bench.
Moral of story-I encourage you to invest in your infrastructure and yourself!