Hay sheds built for the Orana.
A hay shed is the simplest building we make and the easiest one to get wrong. Get the eave height wrong and your telehandler will not stack the top row. Get the wind engineering wrong and the roof goes in the first gust front. Here is how it should be done.
Design to your machine, not to the hay.
The first question we ask on a hay shed is never about hay. It is what you stack with. The answer sets the eave height, and the eave height sets almost everything else about the building and its price.
If you are stacking with a telehandler, you generally want somewhere between 5.5m and 7m at the eave, so the boom can lift a bale over the existing stack and place it on the top row without fouling a purlin. A tractor with a front-end loader and bale forks usually wants 5m to 6m. The way to get it right is to measure your machine at full lift with a bale actually on the forks, add clearance, and design the shed to that number rather than to a catalogue standard.
We labour this because a hay shed built 500mm too low is the most common complaint we get called about, and it is the one thing on a shed that genuinely cannot be fixed afterwards. You cannot raise an eave. You live with a shed that stacks one row less than it should for its entire forty-year life, which quietly costs more than the extra height ever would have. Height is also where owners are tempted to save, because taller means more steel and heavier portals. It is the wrong place to save.
An open front changes the whole structure.
This is the part people underestimate, and it is why hay sheds fail in the Orana more than any other building type. An open-front shed is not an enclosed shed with a wall left off. Under AS 1170.2 it is a fundamentally different structure, because wind that drives into the open bay pressurises the inside and pushes up on the underside of the roof at the same moment the airflow over the outside is sucking it up. Both forces act in the same direction. The net uplift on an open-front roof can be far greater than on an enclosed building of identical dimensions.
Now stack a tall eave on top of that. Height increases the design wind speed the frame must resist, so a 7m open-front hay shed on a cleared block west of Dubbo is carrying serious loads. Dubbo sits in AS 1170.2 Region A, but the terrain category matters as much as the region: a cleared paddock toward Narromine or Gilgandra sits in a worse category than a sheltered town block, which raises the design gust again.
What that means in practice is heavier portals, tighter column spacing, proper roof and wall bracing, and footings sized to hold the building down rather than just hold it up. A generic kit rating does not know any of this about your block. That difference is exactly what our choosing a builder guide is about, and on a tall open-front shed it is not academic.
One more thing owners do to themselves: never cut a brace out to clear a bay for a bigger stack. That strap is what stops the frame folding sideways. We see it constantly in older Orana hay sheds and it turns a sound building into a dangerous one.
Three decisions that protect the hay.
Gravel usually beats concrete.
A hay shed generally does not want a slab. A well-drained compacted gravel or road-base floor lets moisture move down and away instead of trapping it under the bottom row, and it saves the $12,000 to $30,000 that concrete would add. What genuinely matters is that the pad is built up above the surrounding ground so surface water drains away rather than pooling under your stack in a wet week. Concrete only earns its place if the shed doubles as machinery storage or a working floor. If it is purely fodder, spend the money on eave height and drainage.
Ventilation is not optional.
Baled hay respires and puts moisture into the air around it. In a shed that cannot breathe, that moisture sits against the underside of the roof, condenses overnight and drips back onto the top row, and it holds humidity against the steel. Generous eave height helps by itself, and so does keeping the stack off the wall sheets rather than jammed against them. This is the real reason coating choice matters less in a hay shed than airflow does, which our Colorbond versus Zincalume page goes into.
Point the opening away from the weather.
Face the open front away from the prevailing westerly and away from the driving rain that arrives with a summer storm front. That keeps water off the stack and, because of the uplift physics above, it is a structural decision as much as a hay-quality one. It has to be balanced against your access and your machinery paths, which is why we set it standing on the site rather than on a plan in an office.
What a hay shed costs, and the tax angle.
As a 2026 guide for the Dubbo and Orana region, a tall open-front hay shed runs $45,000 to $120,000 supplied and erected for the structure. That is a wide band because eave height and clear span drive the steel so heavily. A 5.5m eave over 9m bays is a very different frame to a 7m eave over 12m bays on an exposed cleared paddock. Most hay sheds skip the slab, which keeps the total well under what an equivalent enclosed farm shed would cost.
A worked example near Geurie.
A 30m x 12m x 6m open-front hay shed on a partly cleared rural block in the Dubbo Regional Council area, three bays, stacking with a telehandler. On rural-zoned land it qualified as exempt development within the floor-area, height and setback limits, so no development application was needed, though the engineering certificate was still produced. Structure came in at roughly $78,000. Compacted road-base pad built up above natural surface with drainage away on the low side added about $9,000, against roughly $30,000 had the owner insisted on concrete. Total near $87,000, with the opening turned east away from the westerly and the eave set from the telehandler at full lift with a bale on the forks. See Geurie for the local conditions and shed cost in Dubbo for the full ranges.
The tax point worth raising with your accountant.
Hay sheds sit in a genuinely favourable spot. Under the fodder storage asset provisions, primary producers have been able to claim an immediate deduction for the cost of a fodder storage asset, which covers hay sheds and silos, first used or installed ready for use on or after 19 August 2018. That is a very different treatment to a general machinery shed, which is normally capital works written off slowly. It can change the real cost of the decision substantially. We build sheds and we are not tax advisers, so take it to your accountant before you rely on it. Our farm shed tax page covers the distinction in more detail.
Hay shed questions.
How high should a hay shed be in the Dubbo region?
Height is set by your machine, not by the hay. If you stack with a telehandler you need roughly 5.5m to 7m at the eave so the boom can lift and place a bale on the top row without fouling the purlins. A tractor with a front-end loader and bale forks generally wants 5m to 6m. Measure your machine at full lift with a bale on the forks, then add clearance, and design to that. Building a hay shed 500mm too low is the most common and most annoying mistake we get asked to fix, and it cannot be fixed.
How much does a hay shed cost in Dubbo in 2026?
As a 2026 guide for the Dubbo and Orana region, a tall open-front hay shed runs $45,000 to $120,000 supplied and erected for the structure. The spread is wide because eave height and clear span drive the steel: a 5.5m eave over 9m bays is a very different frame to a 7m eave over 12m bays on an exposed cleared block. Many hay sheds are built on compacted gravel rather than concrete, which saves the $12,000 to $30,000 a slab would add.
Does a hay shed need a concrete slab?
Usually not, and often it is better without one. A well-drained compacted gravel or road-base floor lets moisture escape downwards and costs far less than concrete. What matters far more is that the pad is built up above the surrounding ground so water drains away rather than pooling under the stack. Concrete makes sense if the shed doubles as machinery storage or a working area. If it is purely hay, put the money into eave height and drainage instead.
Which way should a hay shed face in Central West NSW?
Face the open front away from the prevailing weather, which in the Dubbo region generally means turning the opening away from the westerly and the driving rain that comes with a storm front. An open-front shed under AS 1170.2 carries far higher wind uplift than an enclosed one because wind entering the bay pressurises the inside and pushes the roof up while the outside is sucking it up, so orientation is a structural decision as well as a hay-quality one. We set it on site against your access and your prevailing wind.
Is a hay shed tax deductible for a primary producer?
This is one of the few genuinely favourable rules in farm construction. Under the fodder storage asset provisions, primary producers have been able to claim an immediate deduction for the cost of a fodder storage asset, which includes hay sheds and silos, first used or installed ready for use on or after 19 August 2018. That is very different to a general machinery shed, which is normally treated as capital works and written off slowly. We build sheds, we are not tax advisers, so confirm your own position with your accountant before you rely on it.
Read next.
Get a hay shed sized to your telehandler.
Free on-site measure, eave height set against your actual machine, open-front wind engineering to AS 1170.2, fixed written quote.