A barn is an agricultural building used for storage and as a covered workplace. It may sometimes be used to house animals or to store farming vehicles and equipment. Barns are most commonly found on a farm or former farm.

Construction

With the popularity of tractors following World War II many barns were taken down or replaced with modern Quonset huts made of plywood or galvanized steel. Beef ranches and dairies began building smaller loftless barns often of Quonset huts or of steel walls on a treated wood frame (old telephone or power poles). By the 1960s it was found that cattle receive sufficient shelter from trees or wind fences (usually wooden slabs 20% open).

Uses

In New England, it is common to find barns attached to the main farmhouse (connected farm architecture), allowing for chores to be done while sheltering the worker from the weather.

In the middle of the twentieth century, the large broad roof of barns were sometimes painted with slogans in the United States. Most common of these were the 900 barns painted with ads for Rock City.

Barn Features

• a tack room (where bridles, saddles, etc. are kept), often set up as a breakroom
• a feed room, where animal feed is stored - not typically part of a modern barn where feed bales are piled in a stackyard
• a drive bay, a wide corridor for animals or machinery
• a silo where fermented grain or hay (called ensilage or haylage) is stored.
• a milkhouse for dairy barns; an attached structure where the milk is collected and stored prior to shipment
• a grain (soy, corn, etc) bin for dairy barns, found in the mow and usually made of wood with a chute to the ground floor providing access to the grain, making it easier to feed the cows.
• modern barns often contain an indoor corral with a squeeze chute for providing veterinary treatment to sick animals.

Derivatives

The physics unit "barn", which is a unit of exceedingly small area, was named for the "barn", given the surprisingly large size of this property for a particular element.