Dairy barn flooring is more than a concrete slab. Your dairy barn floor may be impacting your herd much more than you think. While it’s easy to overlook, the barn’s flooring surface can have a significant impact on your herd’s well-being and performance.

Your cows must have a surface that is safe to walk on, yet provides the traction necessary to minimize slips and falls. It’s a delicate balancing act that when done correctly has a direct benefit to the bottom line. Flooring can be an issue in new construction or in barns that are decades old. How you address the issue depends on a variety of factors, but the bottom line is to ensure the surface does not create issues in your herd.

In Karl Burgi’s more than three decades working in all aspects of dairy hoof care, he’s seen all kinds of dairy barn flooring and how it can impact the cow, and ultimately the cow’s productivity. “We developed standards for dairy barn flooring more than 15 years ago that still hold true today,” Burgi says. “But even though the information is out there, you still run into a lot of situations where the flooring is having a direct impact on dairy herd health, mostly through lameness issues.”

Proper flooring has a texture with nice sharp edges yet a smooth surface. Grooves or texture are necessary for the cow to be able to move through the barn without slipping on areas that can be subjected to bedding residue, manure, and liquids — things that don’t lend themselves to good traction. On the other hand, the surface needs to be smooth enough to reduce wear on hooves.

“It’s like walking barefoot across a smooth floor,” Burgi says. “If there’s a sharp point or ridge in the floor, you will notice it immediately. It’s no different for the cow walking across a barn floor.”

Take a Closer Look

The routine of daily barn activities may create a blind spot for producers. Jobs need to get done and cows need to be moved, but these repetitive actions can sometimes mask how your cows are moving through the barn. “The first step in identifying if you have any issues with your barn flooring is to simply watch the cows,” says David Kammel, emeritus professor and Extension specialist at the University of Wisconsin. “Take time to watch how the cows move from one pen to another, or to the parlor and back. Watch if there is any hesitancy or if the cow is not comfortable moving.”

Cows are moved through the barn all the time, but Kammel says most of that activity occurs from the end of the line, and the goal is to get cows from point A to point B. “If there is some hesitancy at the front of the group, you can’t identify it from the back when you are moving cows,” he says.

For example, areas that can cause footing issues include corners or turns. “Maybe there’s been a lot of scraping and the concrete is getting more polished. No one really notices it because it may be obscured with manure or bedding,” Kammel says. “But cows have trouble in that area, and the lack of footing can increase the risk of injury due to slippage.”

New Floors Need Special Attention

For producers moving into a new barn, extra attention to the flooring is imperative before cows arrive. “We have seen new facilities where there are sharp edges and rough concrete areas that cause hoof wear that leads to lameness issues,” Burgi says. “That’s probably one of the more common issues because the floors aren’t completed to specifications.”

It’s more than simply pouring concrete. Slope needs to be adjusted to ensure proper drainage and the avoidance of pooling issues, and grooves need to be put in that won’t cause any issues. “Don’t overlook the concrete work, whether you have the grooves floated in or cut after the concrete is poured,” Burgi says.

The types of grooves will depend on a variety of factors, but it must balance providing a pattern that provides good footing yet is smooth enough to reduce hoof wear.

“Developing a flooring pattern starts with a conversation,” says John Foley, president of DM Concrete Grooving. “It’s a lot more than simply cutting a pattern in the concrete.” 

Foley says he works with customers to look at things such as traffic patterns, barn layout, and drainage to determine how grooving patterns should be cut and where. Even current and future management issues come into play. “We look at things like manure management,” Foley says. “If producers are currently metal bucket skid-steer scraping but are thinking about switching to an automatic scraper, that will impact how we design and implement floor groove patterns. 

“There are many different types of barn setups, so we don’t have a cookie-cutter approach with our customers,” he adds. The bottom line is getting the flooring right. “If the flooring is substandard, you will see issues with lameness in the herd,” Foley says. “Producers need to educate themselves on flooring, determine what will work best for their barn, and take the time to do the job right.”

That starts with doing a lot of homework, evaluating every aspect of how a cow moves throughout the barn, as well as bedding and how manure is handled. “That information will help you determine what is the best flooring for your operation, and ultimately for your cows,” Foley says.

Fixes can be expensive, not only in lost productivity, but also in increased herd health issues caused by lameness or slippage. “And it’s expensive to correct a mistake in grooving or pouring a floor,” Foley says.

The Dairyland Initiative, a project of the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agriculture (thedairylandinitiative.vetmed.wisc.edu), provides a wealth of information on proper dairy barn flooring. It’s a go-to resource for producers, whether it’s new construction or updates to existing barn flooring.