# cow shed or cow house [barn, cowshed, byre] AE vs BE



## stephenlearner

Hi everyone, 

The structure is a house intended for cows. Cows are kept and shelter here. 

What do you call it? a cow shed or cow house? 

I vote for cow shed.


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## Copyright

I vote for barn, with cow shed second (for a much smaller structure). The house is for the cow owners.


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## perpend

How many cows are kept there?


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## stephenlearner

Thank you very much. 

When I asked this question, I did not think of the number of the cows kept there. 

Maybe one cow is kept.


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## Keith Bradford

You shouldn't keep your cows in a barn, they'll eat all the hay or grain that you store there!  Keep them in a *cow shed*, that's the appropriate *housing *for them.  If their cow shed is beneath the barn, it's called an *underhousing*.

(British usage, Cumbria.)


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## Thomas Tompion

I'm also shocked to hear that Copyright is keeping his cows in a barn.

While _cow shed _is probably the common name now, particularly perhaps for city people,_ cow house_ is used by some.  Here are the two examples from the British Corpus:

Nearly every farmer had a barrel of the stuff in his cow house in those days and I had only to go into the corner and turn the tap. _Vets might fly._  James Herriot. 
His death certificate shows that he was found on the floor of his cow house on Christmas Eve 1887, a day before his 71st birthday, having died from a heart attack. _Family history and local history in England._ David Hey. 

The ngrams are interesting, suggesting that_ cow house_ was more commonly used until about 1890.  This supports my view that_ cow house _is common in the country, and that its relative decline coincides with the shift in population from the country to the town, and the corresponding decline in importance of the rural economy.

People who are writing in Google books, like people posting in Word Reference, are mostly city folk, I imagine.

ps. Tweaking the ngrams gives interesting results.  If you tweak them for English Fiction, you find that _cow shed _becomes much more dominant: further support for my view that city people say_ cow shed _and farmers often say_ cow house_?


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## Copyright

In Kansas and Missouri where I grew up, cows were kept in a *barn*, even if there was only one of them. They don't eat all the hay because we have haylofts, a second level where the hay is stored. -- when it's needed to feed the cow(s), it is pitchforked through a hole in the floor to the feeding area below.

I was just being open-minded in suggesting *cow shed* ... I've never heard the term. And *cow house* is simply laughable for the AE I'm familiar with.


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## natkretep

Not a farm boy, but from James Herriot, etc., I'd go for _cow shed_. The thesaurus lists:_byre_, _cow barn_, _cowbarn_, and, yes, even _cowhouse_!


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## Thomas Tompion

Copyright said:


> [...] *cow house* is simply laughable for the AE I'm familiar with.


Yet the AE ngrams suggest that it's still used.

The COCA, the American corpus, has 28 entries for cowshed and none for cow house (or cowhouse).


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## Thomas Tompion

natkretep said:


> Not a farm boy, but from James Herriot, etc., I'd go for _cow shed_. The thesaurus lists:_byre_, _cow barn_, _cowbarn_, and, yes, even _cowhouse_!


James Herriot sometimes says _cow house_, Natkretep.  Look at the example in #6.


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## Keith Bradford

I've just dome an Ngram on the three (cow shed, cow house, byre) for British books and am amazed to find that byre *far *outranks the other two!  Not quite sure what to make of this.  My inlaws and their neighbours in the Lake District talked about _byres_, but they didn't write books...


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## L'irlandais

Thomas Tompion said:


> ...further support for my view that city people say_ cow shed _and farmers often say_ cow house_?


Hello,
The term *Cow house* is fairly commonly used in Ireland.
The barn is often called the "hay shed" where I come from.  (No cows kept in this large structure.)

In damp climates, Ireland for example, the hay and straw are stored away from the livestock, because of a real risk/possibility of Spontaneous combustion


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## perpend

stephenlearner, You could probably just use "cow pen" if it's just one cow.


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## entangledbank

This was one of the words on the English Dialect Survey in the 1950s. As well as byre, less familiar words encountered across the country were shippon and mistall, and compounds like neat-house and cow-stable.


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## Thomas Tompion

I'm familiar with_ shippon_, from my Cheshire childhood.

I'm surprised to see the word outdoes _cow shed _and_ cow house_ in BE, until very recently, though none of the three comes close to_ byre_, as Keith points out.


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## perpend

Have you ever lived on a farm, entangledbank? Pure curiosity.


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## Keith Bradford

But my point, Entangledbank, is that in British printed books, _byre _is the standard word. Not (as I might have thought) dialect. It's twice as common as cowshed (single word) and leaves all the other options far behind.

http://books.google.com/ngrams/grap...800&year_end=2000&corpus=18&smoothing=3&share=

In American books, _byre _still outranks _cowshed _and _cow shed _combined, though only just.

Us townies need to re-think...


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## Copyright

China generally uses AE – which brand of English are you looking for, stephen?


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## Keith Bradford

Copyright said:


> China generally uses AE – which brand of English are you looking for, stephen?



Irrelevant, as I said in #17; if Stephen wants the word most used in the literature of either country, he should use _*byre*_.

Now, I have to say that the above sentence makes me worried; it seems quite counter-intuitive (and I have lived on a cattle farm with a byre). Is this a case of me, a non-farmer, imposing a simplified vocabulary on an area I don't fully understand? If so, we all seemed to do it automatically up to post #8. Or do we all really know all about byres, but chose only to discuss the words in the original post?


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## Copyright

Keith Bradford said:


> Irrelevant, as I said in #17; if Stephen wants the word most used in the literature of either country, he should use _*byre*_.


Not at all irrelevant, especially since you have narrowed the use to literature and we have been given no indication of its intended use. _Merriam-Webster_ defines *byre* as "chiefly British, a cow barn" (my original suggestion).

Perhaps part of the contention comes from the fact that American cowboys may still be asleep at this hour.


> Now, I have to say that the above sentence makes me worried; it seems quite counter-intuitive (and I have lived on a cattle farm with a byre). Is this a case of me, a non-farmer, imposing a simplified vocabulary on an area I don't fully understand? If so, we all seemed to do it automatically up to post #8. Or do we all really know all about byres, but chose only to discuss the words in the original post?


Until this post I have never seen *byre* written or heard it said in my life. I doubt if I'm the only educated American for whom that is true.


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## Thomas Tompion

Copyright said:


> [...], a cow barn" (my original suggestion).



Your original suggestion, Copyright, was _barn_.  You've slipped that_ cow_ in surreptitiously.  It's mooing at me.


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## PaulQ

If a non-native is to make themselves understood, I would suggest, in BE, 'cow shed'; even if that is not the local name for it (and names are myriad throughout the UK) it would be clearly understood. 

I asked my wife (not a country-girl) "What is a byre - b-y-r-e?" The reply was "I've no idea." She is from the northern part of the East Midlands.


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## Copyright

Thomas Tompion said:


> Your original suggestion, Copyright, was _barn_.  You've slipped that_ cow_ in surreptitiously.  It's mooing at me.


I should have been specific (especially in this thread) to say I was referring to the word "barn." No one in my experience has ever called it a "cow barn" and I suspect_ M-W_ is doing that just to clarify the definition of *byre *for AE speakers, i.e. that it means specifically a barn for cows to BE speakers.


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## Myridon

Keith Bradford said:


> In American books, _byre _still outranks _cowshed _and _cow shed _combined, though only just.


This is because you're ignoring the real American English word as mentioned at the start of the thread - barn!
http://books.google.com/ngrams/grap...00&year_end=2000&corpus=17&smoothing=3&share=
I've never seen nor heard the word "byre" before in my life.  Every dictionary I've checked marks it as "British."
Look at the actual results for "Byre." In a lot of the hits, it's a last name, not a building for animals.


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## JustKate

I have been writing about agriculture for more than 25 years now, and Myridon is absolutely right that in AmE it's almost invariably _barn _- and not _cow barn_, either, just _barn._ 

On farms that have more than one species and that need to differentiate the different barns, _barn_ is simply modified by the species name - that is, if they also have a _hog barn_ (although _hog building_ is more common these days), they'll refer to the one for cows as _cattle barn_ when it's for for beef cattle or _dairy barn_ when it's for dairy cattle. I have certainly seen _cow shed_ but not in anything written in the past, say, 80-100 years. 

_Byre_ is *never* used these days (I have run across it only in books, and old books at that), but back when it was last used, which was quite a long time ago, I believe the meaning in AmE was "storage building for livestock feed." They might have fed the cattle in there but they weren't housed there, at least not as far as I know.


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## Keith Bradford

Myridon said:


> ...Look at the actual results for "Byre." In a lot of the hits, it's a last name, not a building for animals.



I was hoping that the ngrams avoided that. Perhaps not.

LATER: Yes, the Ngrams are case-sensitive, so we can rule out proper names.  

*Conclusion, according to Google ngrams 2000*: 
Americans talk mainly about barns; if they want to be more specific, they say cowshed or byre (equal frequency).
Brits also talk about barns, but (if they know the business) they put their hay in them and their cattle in the cowshed or byre (equal frequency).


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## JustKate

My remarks above were about AmE, but I was actually pretty sure that _barn_ is used a lot in BE, too - and I was nearly certain that _byre_ isn't used much anywhere. So I went to FarmingUK.com, and did searches for _barn, cowshed, cow shed_ and _byre_. Here are the results:
Barn: 3,200
Cow shed: 129
Cowshed: 24
Byre: This was interesting because there were more than 900 hits, but almost all of them appeared to be real estate listings and included references to "cottage" developments, lodges and so on, plus a few references to the quaint facilities available on historic properties for sale. I admit that I didn't look at all 900, but I clicked through several pages and I didn't see any that appeared be connected to an actual working farm.

So I would *strongly* recommend using either _barn_ or perhaps _cow shed_.

(Cross-posted with Keith)


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## Myridon

Keith Bradford said:


> Americans talk mainly about barns; if they want to be more specific, they say cowshed or byre (equal frequency).


I still think you're letting Google lead you astray. Ignoring the last names, there's not a single hit on the first five pages clicking on the "1966-2000" link for "byre" that I would call "Americans just talking in modern English about modern times".  There's a Faroese-English dictionary, some archeology, some "Lord of the Rings" type literature, ...


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## JustKate

Keith...Americans do NOT say _byre_ - or if they do is is very rarely and never in reference to anything in use in the modern world. _Cow shed_, maybe, but the term that is used with overwhelming frequency is _barn_.

Go to Google News - this will filter out most of the literary references - and search for "byre." You get only 17 hits, and none of those reflect "Americans talking modern English." Not one. I don't think any of them reflect "Britons talking modern English" either, but you'd be a better judge of that than me. Then try "cow shed" - 26 results. Then try "cowshed" - 225 results. Then try "barn" - 169,000 results.

_Barn_ is the word to use - definitely in AmE and probably in BE, too - with _cowshed/cow shed_ a distant second.

Edit: I'm quite confused by what you meant when you said "Brits also talk about barns, but (if they know the business) they put their hay in them and their cattle in the cowshed or byre (equal frequency)." My search at UKFarming.com does not support this conclusion.


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## Thomas Tompion

JustKate said:


> [...]_Barn_ is the word to use - definitely in AmE and probably in BE, too - with _cowshed/cow shed_ a distant second.


Hello JustKate,

How familiar are you really with BE farming terminology?

I was a bit surprised to see you strongly recommending a use in BE, in a way I would be more than hesitant to do about AE.


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## cyberpedant

Having worked on a few dairy  farms in New England, I can assure you that our only word for "structure in which cows are housed" is "barn." If the word "byre" were mentioned, we'd have looked around for a customer.   A cow "shed" is an open structure—roof and three walls—where cattle out to pasture can take shelter during unpleasant weather. This is entirely AE usage, perhaps even limited to the northeast.


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## Wordsmyth

PaulQ said:


> _[...]_ (and names are myriad throughout the UK) _[...] _


 Absolutely right, Paul, which makes it hard to generalise about BE (on this subject) — or indeed to determine an urban/rural difference. I spent part of my young life on a farm in a very rural part of Somerset (England). The word used was _cowshed _(or _cow shed_). I never once heard _cow house_, and _byre_ wasn't at all common. I suspect that _byre_ gets a high ranking in statistical searches because of its widespread use in literature, but I've rarely heard it in everyday speech (in any part of the UK).

In fact, on the farm where I lived, the _cowshed_ was also called the _milking shed_, because the cows lived in the fields, and were brought into the shed only for milking (and calving). 


JustKate said:


> _[...]_ _Barn_ is the word to use - definitely in AmE and probably in BE, too - with _cowshed/cow shed_ a distant second._[...]
> _ "Brits also talk about barns, but (if they know the business) they put their hay in them and their cattle in the cowshed or byre (equal frequency)." My search at UKFarming.com does not support this conclusion.


 Well, Kate, I wouldn't rely too much on that website search. As Keith and TT have already said, the term _barn_ in the UK usually means a place to store hay or other feed, and often tractors and other farming equipment. 

So _barn_ is the word to use in AE; but not in BE, where _cowshed_ (or _cow shed_) seems favourite (and where _barn_ would be misunderstood).

Ws


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## JustKate

Thomas Tompion said:


> Hello JustKate,
> 
> How familiar are you really with BE farming terminology?
> 
> I was a bit surprised to see you strongly recommending a use in BE, in a way I would be more than hesitant to do about AE.



Fairly familiar, actually. Ag terminology is a specialized field, and I expect I read more farming news from around the world than do most people here. But that's why I did that search on FarmingUK.com (my apologies for mistyping it "UKFarming.com" on first reference) - to see if my impressions would be validated by a search of a well-known British website/ag publishing house, and they were. And then I double-checked it on Google News.

And then, since you're so doubtful about this, I just did a quickie search of a couple of other UK farming sites (Farmers Weekly and Farming Monthly National), and while I haven't taken the time to tabulate them, they were obviously very similar - many hits for _barn_, some for _cowshed/cow shed_, and a number for _byre_ but consisting almost entirely of historical references or references to historic structures, not working farms.

So my opinion is based on my knowledge of ag terminology, not my knowledge of BE in general. And I am quite confident that most BE speakers *who farm* say _barn_ or possibly _cow shed_ far more often than _byre_ when talking about the building in which they house their cattle.


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## JustKate

Wordsmyth said:


> Absolutely right, Paul, which makes it hard to generalise about BE (on this subject) — or indeed to determine an urban/rural difference. I spent part of my young life on a farm in a very rural part of Somerset (England). The word used was _cowshed _(or _cow shed_). I never once heard _cow house_, and _byre_ wasn't at all common. I suspect that _byre_ gets a high ranking in statistical searches because of its widespread use in literature, but I've rarely heard it in everyday speech (in any part of the UK).
> 
> In fact, on the farm where I lived, the _cowshed_ was also called the _milking shed_, because the cows lived in the fields, and were brought into the shed only for milking (and calving).
> Well, Kate, I wouldn't rely too much on that website search. As Keith and TT have already said, the term _barn_ in the UK usually means a place to store hay or other feed, and often tractors and other farming equipment.
> 
> So _barn_ is the word to use in AE; but not in BE, where _cowshed_ (or _cow shed_) seems favourite (and where _barn_ would be misunderstood).
> 
> Ws



_Cowshed/cow shed_ is a possibility. _Byre_ is not. And I actually think _barn_ would be understood as well, but that's really hard to discern from an internet search.


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## Wordsmyth

JustKate said:


> _[...] _many hits for _barn_, some for _cowshed/cow shed_, and a number for _byre_ but consisting almost entirely of historical references or references to historic structures, not working farms._[...]_
> And I am quite confident that most BE speakers *who farm* say _barn_ or possibly _cow shed_ far more often than _byre_ when talking about the building in which they house their cattle.


 There would be a lot of hits for _barn_, Kate, because most British farms have a barn (as well as a cowshed if they farm cattle), but did you check whether all those _barn_ hits referred to buildings housing cattle? I'd be very surprised (based on personal experience) if most BE speakers who farm said _barn_ when talking about the building in which they house their cattle.

Ws


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## JustKate

No, I didn't check - didn't have time, to be honest. That's why I hedged with _cow shed_. 

One thing we all have to be careful about is remembering that what regular folks call those buildings and what farmers call them is often quite different. That's definitely the case in AmE, where nonfarmers can't seem to tell the difference between a grain bin and a silo, and I'm pretty sure that's the case in BE, too - and I base this not on my knowledge of BE but on my knowledge of how casual those not involved in a profession are with the terminology that profession uses. I think that might be part of the confusion with _byre_ (that and all those historical references), but that's just a guess.


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## Wordsmyth

Yes indeed, lay people often (mis)use different terms from those of professionals — and even professional terminology varies: I was present once when an equipment rep was discussing with a neighbouring farmer the re-equipping of his milking shed, and the rep used the term "milking parlour". The farmer replied "Parlour?! Ain't 'avin no cows in my parlour. Gurt mess that'd make, wunnit!" So yes, terminology varies, even amongst agricultural specialists.

However in the case of _cowshed_ and _barn_, two people (Keith and I) who have lived on farms bear witness to the usual meaning of _barn_ as used by farming professionals in the UK. And I promise, it wasn't just our farm: the building for cows was called a _cowshed_ by all the farmers I knew in our region.

If stephenlearner is looking for a single word for universal application, perhaps it should be_ cowshed_: at least it seems to be a possibility (even if 'a distant second') in AE, whereas _barn_ would be misleading, or at the very least ambiguous, in BE (and IrE: post #12). Otherwise, I'd suggest sticking to _barn_ in AE and _cowshed_ in BE.

Ws


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## JustKate

May I ask when you lived on a farm? These things do sometimes change, and they can change pretty rapidly, too. And then, just to keep it interesting, other things remain exactly the same for generations. I can remember some...uncomfortable conversations with my father-in-law, who quit farming many years ago and yet seemed to be under the impression that nothing had changed in agriculture in the intervening 25 years. And as those of us who follow these things know, a whole *lot* has changed in agriculture in recent decades.

But I do agree that _cowshed_ would be a pretty safe term, if you have to use one for both AmE and BE (it would sound quite dated in AmE but it would be understandable). But for AmE, it should be _barn_, _cattle barn_ or _dairy barn_.


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## Wordsmyth

Good point, Kate, my farm experience was a good few years ago, so I can't swear that terminology hasn't changed. I did just check with four Brit colleagues, ages 25-32, and all came up immediately with _cowshed_ (and all described a _barn_ as storage for hay, feed, equipment, etc), so I'm reasonably reassured.  

By the way (not that I'm making any judgement on modern AE usage), the word _barn_ derives from the Old English word for "_barley house_" — not a cow in sight!

Ws


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## JustKate

The original meaning of the OE _cattle_ was "moveable property." It has the same root as _chattel_. So there's a cow in sight, but there are other things in sight as well.


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## Wordsmyth

Touché!  ... or maybe that explains why Brit farmers keep their chattels in the barn.

Ws


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## George French

The only comment I can make after reading this thread is that there seem to be different classes of terminology associated with different classes of observers, for want of a better word...

GF..

I grew up with the words cow/milking/cattle shed. Now I was never in the farming business so I can only going to give my personal interpretation. The cows were milked in the milking shed and the cattle were housed in the cow/cattle shed.

A barn is where one has fun in the hay...  My COD does not mention animals at all....


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## Wordsmyth

George French said:


> _[...]_ A barn is where one has fun in the hay... _[...] _


 Good point, GF. I have fond memories of a number of barns, and if they'd been anything like a cowshed inside, we'd have gone somewhere else! 

Ws


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## JustKate

I only rarely hear either _milking barn_ or _milking shed_ for the place in which the cows are milked (_dairy barn_ is used for the place where the cows are housed, not where they are milked). The usual term for the place where the milking occurs, at least here in the Midwest, is _milking parlor_. You can have all this high-tech equipment to get the milk out of the cow as quickly as possible without causing her distress, to instantly test for bacteria or residues, and to chill the milk to 40 degrees F or colder within seconds...and it's still called a parlor. How adorable is that?


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## Wordsmyth

Ah, so that's where the _parlour_ came from (cf my #37)! Perhaps the sales guy was representing an American company. I suppose it's quite an approriate term if it's right next to (or part of) the _dairy barn_: the cows move out of the living room into the parlour (or what, in more down-to-earth UK English, is sometimes called the front room). Since all the cows in my area were outdoor types, they were milked in a simple shed. A parlour would've been far too grand for them.

Ws


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## L'irlandais

I think we should be wary of stats.
The wonderful thing about the English language is that it's evolving all the time.
Barn, like byre, comes from Old English ; it's origins are _barley_ + _house_.
That in North America, barns can now be used for storing anything from livestock to railroad trains, is cool.
That the Old English word byre, is still in common usage is equally cool.  Both statements are true, so what's the problem?

"Parlour" is from Anglo-Norman (consequently also used in Ireland, since we had both the Anglos & the Normans.)
I defo heard "Milking parlour" used in my childhood ;  growing up, as I did, surrounded by farming communities.


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## perpend

stephenlearner said:


> Thank you very much.
> 
> When I asked this question, I did not think of the number of the cows kept there.
> 
> Maybe one cow is kept.



I think many are overlooking this from the OP.

Again, maybe "cow pen". It may just be a lean-to. I don't think one cow needs a much larger structure. "shed" works for me, if need be.


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## eidsvolling

Someone needs to take the Google programmer responsible for "byre" showing up in AE results out to the barn and give him/her a good thrashing. Then take him/her out to the field to watch the CORN being threshed before it is dried and fed to the cattle – in the BARN!  

(And yes, < for what it's worth >, my grandfather was a farmer in Minnesota. Who kept his cows and horses in the BARN. And whose farm was way too small to include a cow shed out in the pastures.)


< Text abbreviation written out in full by moderator. (Cagey) >


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## RM1(SS)

Keith Bradford said:


> I've just dome an Ngram on the three (cow shed, cow house, byre) for British books and am amazed to find that byre *far *outranks the other two!  Not quite sure what to make of this.  My inlaws and their neighbours in the Lake District talked about _byres_, but they didn't write books...



From reading books written by British authors, I was under the impression that byre was the only word used in Britain for this structure.

But I'm with Copyright and cyberpedant - the main building for cows is a barn, with cow shed (two words) as an option for a much smaller, open building, such as this or this.


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## bootyboy734

It is called a "cattle shed" for any quantity of cattle (cows)


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## Andygc

bootyboy734 said:


> It is called a "cattle shed" for any quantity of cattle (cows)


If you read back, you'll see that it's also called a cowshed. In particular see the posts by Wordsmyth, with his farming background.


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## Thomas Tompion

eidsvolling said:


> Someone needs to take the Google programmer responsible for "byre" showing up in AE results out to the barn and give him/her a good thrashing. Then take him/her out to the field to watch the CORN being threshed before it is dried and fed to the cattle – in the BARN!
> 
> (And yes, < for what it's worth >, my grandfather was a farmer in Minnesota. Who kept his cows and horses in the BARN. And whose farm was way too small to include a cow shed out in the pastures.)
> 
> 
> < Text abbreviation written out in full by moderator. (Cagey) >


The performance of Google in tracking down these instances is remarkable.  I don't think the programmer should be punished.

Just feed _barn_ into the ngrams (click), and it knocks the others out of the arena.


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