A
barnyard (
American EnglishAmerican English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two thirds of native speakers of English live in the United States.English is the most common language in the United States...
) or
farmyard (
British EnglishBritish English, or UK English or English English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
) is a
yardA yard is a unit of length in several different systems, including English units, Imperial units, and United States customary units. It is equal to 3 feet or 36 inches, although its length in SI units varied slightly from system to system...
adjoined to a
barnA barn is an agricultural building used for storage and as a covered workplace. It may sometimes be used to house livestock or to store farming vehicles and equipment...
. As a combination of architecture and landscape design, the barnyard is less common now than in former times, especially since the
tractorA tractor is a vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery used in agriculture or construction...
and
truckA truck or lorry is a motor vehicle - more specifically a commercial vehicle commonly used for transporting goods and materials. Some light trucks/lorries are similar in size to a passenger automobile...
have replaced the
horseThe horse is a hoofed mammal, a subspecies of one of seven extant species of the family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
and
wagonA wagon or dray is a heavy four-wheeled vehicle. Wagons were formerly pulled by animals such as horses, mules or oxen. Today farm wagons are pulled by tractors and trucks. Wagons are used for transporting people or goods...
.
A barnyard of the 1800s was fenced-in an area of an
acreThe acre is a unit of area in a number of different systems, including the imperial and U.S. customary systems. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre....
or more; the area is less in modern times. The barnyard is the domain of the
muleA mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes. Of the two F1 hybrids between these two species, a mule is easier to obtain than a hinny...
s,
horseThe horse is a hoofed mammal, a subspecies of one of seven extant species of the family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
s, and other working animals, as well as fowl and working pets, such as barn cats.
A
barnyard (
American EnglishAmerican English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two thirds of native speakers of English live in the United States.English is the most common language in the United States...
) or
farmyard (
British EnglishBritish English, or UK English or English English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
) is a
yardA yard is a unit of length in several different systems, including English units, Imperial units, and United States customary units. It is equal to 3 feet or 36 inches, although its length in SI units varied slightly from system to system...
adjoined to a
barnA barn is an agricultural building used for storage and as a covered workplace. It may sometimes be used to house livestock or to store farming vehicles and equipment...
. As a combination of architecture and landscape design, the barnyard is less common now than in former times, especially since the
tractorA tractor is a vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery used in agriculture or construction...
and
truckA truck or lorry is a motor vehicle - more specifically a commercial vehicle commonly used for transporting goods and materials. Some light trucks/lorries are similar in size to a passenger automobile...
have replaced the
horseThe horse is a hoofed mammal, a subspecies of one of seven extant species of the family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
and
wagonA wagon or dray is a heavy four-wheeled vehicle. Wagons were formerly pulled by animals such as horses, mules or oxen. Today farm wagons are pulled by tractors and trucks. Wagons are used for transporting people or goods...
.
A barnyard of the 1800s was fenced-in an area of an
acreThe acre is a unit of area in a number of different systems, including the imperial and U.S. customary systems. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre....
or more; the area is less in modern times. The barnyard is the domain of the
muleA mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes. Of the two F1 hybrids between these two species, a mule is easier to obtain than a hinny...
s,
horseThe horse is a hoofed mammal, a subspecies of one of seven extant species of the family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
s, and other working animals, as well as fowl and working pets, such as barn cats. Animals often rest in barnyards after days of work on the farm. On small farms, pasture animals such milk goats or a dairy cow may stay in the barnyard when not in the fields.
The barnyard is also a good place for an apple or
pear treeA tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...
, which can provide shade. The
watering troughTrough may refer to:* Trough , a container for animal feed * Trough , a long depression less steep than a trench* Trough , an elongated region of low atmospheric pressure...
(in past times supplied by water from a
hand driven wellA water well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, boring or drilling to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The well water is drawn by an electric submersible pump, a vertical turbine pump, a handpump or a mechanical pump...
) occupy a prominent place in the barnyard, with the water kept in wooden or metal troughs. The water trough must be filled daily, perhaps by a
pitcher pumpA pump is a device used to move fluids, such as gases, liquids or slurries. A pump displaces a volume by physical or mechanical action. One common misconception about pumps is the thought that they create pressure. Pumps alone do not create pressure; they only displace fluid, causing a flow. ...
, or by
windmillA windmill is a machine which translates linear motion of wind to rotational motion by means of adjustable vanes called sails. The main use is for a grinding mill powered by the wind, reducing a solid or coarse substance into pulp or minute grains by crushing, grinding, or pressing...
power. Pumping the trough full, by hand, might be the chore of the farm boys. It takes a long time of continuous pumping with a pitcher pump to fill a large trough.
A large barn is often central to the barnyard, storing wagons and a
hay rakeA rake is an agricultural and horticultural implement consisting of a toothed bar fixed transversely to a handle, and used to collect leaves, hay, grass, etc., and, in gardening, for loosening the soil, light weeding and levelling, removing dead grass from lawns,...
, and providing stalls for the farm animals. A hayloft occupies the second floor, the barn cupola capped off the hayloft. The loft has a series of openings in the floor just above the stalls. These openings are used to fork hay into the cribs below. The hayloft is a pleasant place to play on rainy days, and children tunnel through the hay and build mounds to jump into. Frequently, the barn houses the corn crib and a corn sheller. The corn is used to supplement the hay diet and is relished both by horses and mules, as well as by foraging chickens and guinea fowl. It is also a boon to mice and rats, so farmers often keep barn cats to control
verminVermin is a term applied to various animal species regarded as pests or nuisances and especially to those associated with the carrying of disease. Since the term is defined in relation to human activities, which species are included will vary from area to area and even person to person...
.