Ready to make the smart choice?
Boost your dairy farm's production while limiting your environmental impact with our timber post mounted composting barns. By providing clean, dry bedding and protection from the elements, composting barns help support better herd happiness – and that means better herd health. Enjoy improved calving, reduced mastitis rates, and improved milk production by up to 20% per annum. These barns also allow you to repurpose effluent into compost, providing high-quality fertiliser for crops and reducing the ecological harm of leachate.
Make the smart choice for your farm. Choose a SmartShelters composting barn design that prioritises cow comfort.
A composting barn — colloquially referred to as a ‘mootel’ — offers a sheltered, off-paddock shed where dairy cows can rest comfortably on a bed of composting material beneath a covered roof. The system relies on an aerobic process, where beneficial microbes actively compost the manure, significantly reducing the health problems often seen in traditional dairy housing. When it's time to refresh the bedding, the spent material becomes a nutrient-rich fertiliser, ready to be used across your farm.
A composting barn uses a deep bedding system—typically woodchip, sawdust, or a mix of both — that promotes aerobic composting beneath your herd. As cows deposit manure, microbes break down the carbon-rich bedding, generating heat that naturally evaporates moisture and urine. Temperatures can reach 40–50°C at 300mm depth, keeping the bedding warm and dry.
Over time, this process transforms the bedding into nutrient-rich compost, which can be lab-tested and spread across your farm to boost soil health and pasture productivity. Depending on cow numbers, bedding material, and barn management, the bedding can last 2 to 5 years — delivering both environmental and financial returns.
NOTE: The bedding needs to be ripped each day by a ripper to a depth of at least 450mm.
Comfortable, dry bedding improves cow welfare and calving. At the same time, the heat, soft walking surface, and natural ventilation reduce the risks of mastitis, lameness, and airborne disease.
Some farms have seen yield improvements of up to 20% with improved cow comfort and health — results will vary depending on your operation.
Composting barns significantly reduce effluent pond requirements, especially for covered bedding areas — helping minimise infrastructure costs.
The composted bedding provides a nutrient-rich fertiliser for spreading on crops or pastures in spring, increasing on-farm feed production and making the composting barn well worth the cost.
Production won’t be affected by weather events or summer heat stress. Winter grazing challenges can also be eliminated – with dedicated cow housing, you’ll free up more space to grow productive dairy pasture or other high-value crops.
Composting barns help meet MPI welfare standards for shelter and shade, while eliminating the need for muddy standoff or sacrifice paddocks. The result: cleaner, drier conditions for your animals and better pasture protection.
Composting barns are available in a range of sizes to suit your site and herd. They can be fitted with end walls, header rails, side eaves, gutters, and downpipes — designed to support airflow, drainage, and ease of use.
Expand or relocate your composting barn as you need. The modular design allows for easy adjustments to the layout or capacity expansion as your farm grows.
Our composting barns are constructed with galvanised steel frames and industrial-grade PVC-free fabric that withstands snow and rain. They’re a long-lasting yet easy-to-maintain solution.
Get everything sorted in the span of months. Composting barns are much quicker and more affordable to install than traditional dairy cow sheds.
"We've pulled calves out of the mud, and it takes a long time for the pasture to recover. The shelters have made a huge difference to the land"
‘‘The cows are shiny, happy, and fat here. They are probably in the best condition we have had cows in winter.’’
“We are growing cow condition every year, and our pastures are being looked after, and we are getting more grass”. Feed savings are rising, and there’s little wastage."
Yes. Composting barns provide a warm, dry, and sheltered space that supports cow health, comfort, and welfare. The aerobic bedding process generates heat (up to 60°C), which helps evaporate moisture and kill pathogens — reducing health risks. Good ventilation supports airflow, and daily ripping maintains aerobic conditions. With 750mm of feed face per cow and improved conditions for calving, composting barns help create a healthier, more productive herd.
Composting barn costs vary depending on size, design, and site requirements. We build structures up to 35m wide and customise each barn to suit your operation. While not the cheapest on the market, SmartShelters barns are built to last — with premium materials, expert design, and New Zealand’s longest warranty (12 years).
Request a quote today to get pricing tailored to your farm.
SmartShelters’ composting barns are purpose-built to suit your herd, site, and farming style. We design each structure with optimal space per cow (typically 8–10 m²), 750 mm of feed space, and industry-leading airflow to support bedding composting and reduce airborne disease risk.
With decades of experience and premium materials, we deliver proven comfort and performance — tailored to New Zealand conditions.
Every farm is different, and getting your composting barn right starts with the right advice. Factors like site drainage, shelter orientation, and space requirements will all influence your design — and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.
The best first step? Talk to us. We’ll assess your site, listen to your goals, and recommend a setup tailored to your farm, stock, and region. Then we’ll build it — fast, with expert guidance and ongoing support to get you up and running smoothly.
Contact our experienced team today to discuss a manure barn for your farm.
There are two methods of fermentation composting – aerobic and anaerobic. Anaerobic can be thought of as ‘natural’ decomposition, while aerobic seeks to replicate natural decomposition, while speeding up the process and enabling it to be undertaken on larger scales.
The differences are best summed up in table form:
SmartShelter composting barns utilise aerobic composting, meaning organic materials are turned into fertiliser faster and on larger scales, while also killing dangerous pathogens.
Composting barns should be cleaned out at least once a year, although this timeframe will depend on what the bedding-turned-fertiliser is intended to be used for – whether to fertilise your own crops or to sell as a finished compost product. 15-30cm of bedding should be left in the barn to help kickstart microbial activity in the new pack.
Starting up a fresh compost bed is usually done in autumn, so that the heat from decomposition is at its peak during the colder winter months. You’ll want to restart your bedding during a period when daily highs are above 10C for a four to six week stretch. This ensures that a good amount of heat is being generated by the time the cooler weather hits.
Atop the 15-30cm of residual bedding you should place 30cm of dry bedding – usually either sawdust or fine wood shavings. You’ll then need to stir the pack regularly – ideally twice a day – to kickstart the aerobic composting process and ensure there’s a soft, dry surface for your herd to enjoy.
Contact our experienced team today to discuss a truly smart shelter solution for your property.
Protect what matters with New Zealand-made shelters built on 100 years of trusted expertise. Contact us today!
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