Why are Barns painted red?

[MoKelly]

However the farmers are KC Chiefs fans.

Could be true. For sure we know they cannot possibly be Kansas Jayhawk football fans.:cool2:

MoKelly

 

[newbury]

Well down in Mississippi I thought they painted them red to match the rust color to match all the machinery they leave out to rust.

 

[OldMcDonald]

At best it is a very tenuous link. Only four in a million stars are massive enough to go through the supernova process that they describe. Rather more probably produce the iron oxide grains directly themselves... see
2010ApJ...717L..92M (arXiv): McDonald, Sloan, Zijlstra, et al. — Rusty old stars: a source of the missing interstellar iron?

 

[JeremyL]

On an old PBS special on barns, the correspondent asked farmers why they painted their barns red. They said, "Because it is the cheapest color."
So they asked the farm supply store why red was the cheapest color and they said, "Because that is what we sell the most of."
Supply and demand, makes sense to me. I guess?

 

[DrRod]

I have always heard that it came from farmers making a home made paint. They would take skim milk and mix red clay with it and somehow it stuck, and the clay was quite weather resistant. So that started the tradition. It would be interesting if someone volunteered to try this and reported back on it.

 

[DFB]

I have red ochre sediment here in my wellwater...that stuff stains everthing!

 

[oosik]

When we moved here there was an old gallon can of lead based red barn paint. Used it to paint the side of one of my buildings. That was 32 years ago and the paint & side of the building are still in very good condition.

Down south of me, about 50 miles, are several large settlements of folks of German ancestry. Their barns & outbuildings are painted a shade of grey or brownish red.

 

[zzvyb6]

Blood red in fact.

 

[tcartwri]

Cheapest pigment. Cheapest paint. And it usually covers in one coat.

 

[DFB]

Doesn't matter to the cow :confused3: