I was contacted recently by a young Co Meath farmer. His father had a slatted shed built in the early 1990s under a grant scheme. After just weeks a slat gang collapsed and cattle fell into the tank which was luckily just a quarter full. The cattle were rescued but badly shaken.

The slat manufacturer brought a replacement slat gang and fished the broken one out of the tank. It turned out it had no reinforcing steel. The pieces of broken slat are shown in the picture. The manufacturer examined the other slat gangs in the shed and said they were up to standard.

The young farmer has now started farming full-time. He is safety-conscious and is wondering if the other slats in the shed actually have reinforcing. He also wants to warn other farmers that substandard slats can be manufactured and delivered on-farm, albeit rarely. It’s possible to have the reinforcing in slats, or any concrete structure, independently checked using a cover meter, a rebar locator or similar device, using the service of an engineer. In this case the farmer would likely, after the lengthy intervening period, have to pay for this himself.

A second issue is that slats are designed with an expected working life of 20 years – which these slats have now exceeded. Teagasc and the Department of Agriculture recommend that once slats reach 15 years they should be cleaned and examined every year for sagging, spalling, cracking and corrosion. Some slats will exceed this working life – but annual checking is advised.