Summary

In cattle breeding, the farmer usually keeps weaned young animals for more than one winter. In Estonia, due to the climatic conditions during the winter period, a significant part of the young calves feed is used to regulate their body temperature. This results in lower growth, whilst the animals release the same amount of greenhouse gases they would during normal growth.

A collaboration was set up between an organic cattle farm, a university and agricultural experts to look for possible solutions. During the project, various energy and resource efficient architectural and engineering options were combined with high-tech green technology and mechatronic systems, to find the best structural and technical solution. This included various analyses, simulations, computational models and tests. 

Results

The outcome of this project was the concept ‘TARK LAUT’ which is a design for raising cattle in an optimal microclimate.

Thanks to the new design more kilos of beef are produced for each kilogram of methane produced by a bovine animal. 

TARK LAUT has optimised the design and outside coating for the building, to capture plenty of daylight in wintertime and catche up to 80% of sunlight in the summer (850 W/m2).

In the winter, the 500 m2 building keeps the animals warm, fed, hydrated and lit, while only using 700 kw/h of net energy (around EUR 70 per month). In the summer, the building dries 100 tonnes of hay within 48 hours by using 200 kw/h of net energy (around EUR 20 for 24 hours).