What's in your stock tank ?

[GrannyG]

What's in your stock tank ?
We heard the talk around town of one of the locals killing an alligator a couple weeks ago....it was a pinky swear truth.....and there are always skeptics about this, but it was in the paper this morning. One of the local farmers kept telling people there was an alligator in his tank, he had seen it....several times, including his son had seen it....but it went on closed ears and raised eyebrows.....and now he has been vindicated. Since the drought, the tanks have been drying up, and so the alligator was seeking deeper depths to call home, and ended up in a ditch. We heard he was in the road and shocked the driver of the truck when he saw it...but it truly was a 'gator and he is now in gator heaven. This was a large alligaor, not a little bitty one....evidentally some one turned a pet loose in the tank years ago.....be careful when you see eyes looking back at you in that tank ! You might look like dinner !

http://www.reporternews.com/news/200...cates-dad-son/

[uncle Will in In.]

Stock tanks up here can be hauled home in a pickup truck. Pretty hard for a big gater to hide in one of those.
Did the farmer miss any livestock? <>UNK

[GrannyG]

There was never any report of missing livestock...bet he lost the fish though......

[big rockpile]

We was swimming in our Stock Tank but I drained it and haven't refilled it.

big rockpile

[7thswan]

Uh, I tryed to raise catfish in one of mine-they got ick. It's empty now. All the other ones I keep goldfish in to eat the Skeeto larva. Nothin scary here.

[beaglady]

One of mine has meat chicks, and the other, turkey poults. They make great brooders.

[gone-a-milkin]

Mine is upside down and being used as a tap dancing stage by the goats.

But now Ima skeered to go swimming in the pond....

(thanks a lot GrannyG..)

[oceantoad]

A stock tank in Texas is a pond in the rest of the U.S.

I did buy a 135 gallon water trough for my dog to use last week. It is a 1X5 foot round trough, not a tank. A tank would be enclosed for water storage.

[Jan Doling]

I've been planning to buy one to use as a floating patio on the pond (another HT poster uses one to go down the river...they put coolers and lawn chairs in it!) or as a pool for the girls....maybe when the economy perks up a bit.

[Windy in Kansas]

Picture this----dry western Kansas that only gets 19" of rainfall per year.

My brother, a Kansas Wildlife and Parks enforcement officer kept getting calls telling him that there was an alligator at the Garden City Golf Course.

He and a co-worker finally found the right water hazard at the right time and did indeed capture a live alligator.

Following a news story where the youth reporting it were credited with the spotting the 'gator was taken to a Kansas zoo.

I no longer remember the size of the alligator but it was several feet long. Far from being an adult however.

[ErinP]

That's just way too close for comfort!

[glazed]

I just read the article in the Abilene Reporter News

http://www.reporternews.com/news/200...cates-dad-son/

[empofuniv]

I don't think we had alligators in our stock tank in southern OK when I was a child.

But to this day I remember my g'ma telling about the nests of water moccasins and cotton mouths that would stay just under the water of the stock tank where you couldn't see them and how they'd wait for a little girl to come along and disobey her g'ma and go swimming in the tank and then those snakes would explode up and get ahold of that little girl and drag her down just threshing and rolling all over her and biting her over and over and over again.

G'ma could tell a good story.

To this very day I've never set so much as one toe in any stock tank - metal tank, pond tank or holding tank at the base of a windmill.

And I'm in my 60's.

(I liked to died when I saw that scene in Lovesome Dove where one of the cowboys gets into snakes in one of the creeks...it was a while before I could breathe again.)

Pam

[glazed]

THAT scene from Lonesome Dove is EXACTLY the image I brought to mind when I read your grandma's tale of warning!!!!

Dang, she sure guaranteed your safety, didn't she!

[Common Tator]

Originally Posted by uncle Will in In.

Stock tanks up here can be hauled home in a pickup truck. Pretty hard for a big gater to hide in one of those.
Did the farmer miss any livestock? <>UNK

I think in Texas, they call ponds "tanks".

[glazed]

Originally Posted by Common Tator

I think in Texas, they call ponds "tanks".

Ranchers don’t call them ponds. Ponds are for picnics and pollywogs.

Ranchers call them what they are: stock tanks for sheep and cattle, for the dead-serious business of keeping animals alive in a semi-arid land plagued by drought.

Most tanks in Texas are murky man-made reservoirs, muddy watering holes ringed by hoofprints and dung, built by ranchers who bulldoze pits or earthen dams across gulleys to catch runoff and hold it awhile.

Statistically, the average tank in Texas covers four tenths of an acre, but the official figure is somewhat skewed—in South Texas a tank might cover 25 acres, while in East Texas you can almost jump across some.


Excerpt from a May 1986 Texas Monthly article: http://www.texasmonthly.com/preview/1986-05-01/primer

[hotzcatz]

Well, there's just goldfish, guppies and water lilies in my "stock tank" and you could jump across it either direction without a lot of trouble so it's not a Texas stock tank, I guess. Mostly it is to give the bees somewhere to get water so smaller critters need smaller tanks.

[Windy in Kansas]

Originally Posted by Mama Crow

Most tanks in Texas are murky man-made reservoirs, muddy watering holes ringed by hoofprints and dung, built by ranchers who bulldoze pits or earthen dams across gulleys to catch runoff and hold it awhile.

Thanks for enlightening me. I have never heard the likes of this before.

So what do you call the galvanized, fiberglass, and poly tanks that are purchased to hold water for livestock? You know, the ones the rest of us call stock tanks?

[oceantoad]

A water trough at the feed store I use. Just bought a 1X5 foot, round,galvanized, 135 gallon for $145.

[MaggieJ]

There's a story they used to tell up Bancroft, Ontario way, about some farm kids back around the turn of the last century who were sent out to bring home the cows. The kids came running back to the house, hollering about a monster in the river.

Highly sceptical, the adults went back to the river with them... and sure enough, there was the monster... a big old gator. Turned out the gator was an escapee from the circus that had gone through town some little time before.

I'll bet it was a long time before those kids went swimming in the river again. I never heard that it was recaptured, but I suppose the long, cold winter killed it.