Winter Watering

SuperDog · #1 08/28/08, 08:25 AM

For those who live in northern climates.... what do you do for watering your cattle in the winter? Im trying to come up with a plan for this winter, and am looking for options.

Thanks
Mike

Up North · #2 08/28/08, 10:00 AM

An investment to purchase and install to be sure, but worth every penny IMO.
Livestock will have 45F to 55F water available 24/7 and perform well as a result. No "ice cream headache" for cows drinking freezing cold water. No dehydration from once or twice a day watering of stock. You will save much labor, stress, and time knowing the system has watering handled.
I would note that during spells of -65F windchills for 2-3 days, one needs to windbreak the waterer with either a plank fence or strategically placed round bales, or unit may freeze up under extremely harsh conditions.
Click here:
http://www.petersenwaterers.com/secu...ts/default.asp

Up North · #3 08/28/08, 10:05 AM

BTW we had two of these in operation located in Bayfield County, WI before we moved to Kansas. They performed admirably.

Haggis · #4 08/28/08, 11:00 AM

I keep a floating water heater in a 100 gallon watering tank in the barn shed, fill the tank as needed, and have never had a problem. The tank was aout $100 new and the heater costs about $30 (I've used the same tank and heater for several years). By the by, it gets very cold on the Iron Range of Northern Minnesota and my barn is open shedded to the south, meaning there is nothing between my water tank and the West Wind but a few strands of electrical fence wire.

Mare Owner · #5 08/28/08, 11:35 AM

Before we got the Ritchie auto waterers, we used a hose and stock tank. Every morning we'd fill the tank (sorry, not sure on the size..) about 3/4 full and all the cows would be right there and take turns drinking. Drain the hose and put up for the next morning. They all drank in the morning and that was all they got until the next morning. DH did that for 15 years here and never had any problems with the cattle doing it that way, then I moved in and we got the auto waterers! Pain in the patootie draining hoses every morning!

G. Seddon · #6 08/28/08, 12:50 PM

We're in VA, so not an extreme climate. We have several Ritchie automatic waterers that occasionally need slush and ice removed to keep the plastic ball from sticking (not enough cattle traffic on these waterers). We also use a couple of Rubbermaid 100-gal. troughs with heating elements; they use quite a bit of electricity, but they function well. We use hoses to fill them, yeah, a pain to keep drained, but necessary.

Macybaby · #7 08/28/08, 02:42 PM

Before we got the Ritchie auto waterer, we used a 150 gallon poly tank. We built a plywood form that we could put around the tank (four sides and a top, screwed together). We put insulation around the tank inside the cover. The top had an opening in one side. This also kept the floating heater out of reach, as we had a horse that liked to play with them.

We put the tank down hill from the house, and then drove in metal fence posts and wired 2" pvc pipe going from the house down to the tank. We did not glue it together, just friction fit. The upper end was about 20' from the spigot on the house. BTW - we had extension cords running from the garden shed to plug in the heater.

When we needed to fill the tank, we took a 25' chunk of hose and hooked it up to the spigot, and shoved the other end into the PVC pipe. After the tank was full, we only had the small lenght of hose to deal with. The 2" pvc was big enough to drain before enough froze to cause problems. The tank was about 200 feet from the water source, and we dealt with hoses for two years before coming up with this idea. Seemed that even if we tried to be very careful draining hoses, we'd still end up with frozen spots.

This was when we lived in midwestern WI. Even if you are on flat land, you could probably slant the PVC to keep the water flowing.

When we moved, the SD place already had auto waterers in place. That is so nice, unless you loose power for 10 days in the winter. Ours froze up solid, but it worked just fine once the power came back on and everything warmed up.

Cathy

MayLOC · #8 08/28/08, 02:57 PM

depends on your circumstances with what might work best for you.

A lot of the time the cattle will break their own iced tanks even by standing on the ice in them. When we get real thick ice and extended cold temps. we go each morning with a sledge hammer and a pitch fork and break the ice as far as we can reach in towards the center of the tank all the way around and fork the ice out, or into the middle of the tank in a pile. We do this with dirt tanks also (ponds). We do it one time per day.

THe tank heaters have all to date proven a failure in the pasture tanks. They will only keep a very small amount of water right around them free of ice and the cattle fight over that spot and do not all get watered and mess up the heater in the process. Either that or some heaters just freeze right over in the ice.

Also only a few of our tanks on the ranch have electric at them. But we have tried various models over the years.

We also just daily break corrall tanks also. All of our tanks are very large and rarely freeze down solid. If you had very small tanks, you would have more a problem with them freezing solid , but your tank heater would also be more likely to work for you too.

I am going to use tank heaters in my goat water tubs this winter again. They worked fairly well last year, but then again the tubs are very very small.

Cathy--I soo soo soo agree what a pain draining hoses are in the dead of winter; no fun at all!

But my most unfun water/winter memory was two years back during a bad blizzard. We had to unnexpectedly bring up a few heavy bred heifers to the house (where we had not finished our corrall at the house). There was no tank and not enough hoses to reach the heifers. So drudging through the blizzard we had to bucket hot water out of the bathtub to 14 (thankfully only 14) heifers for about 10 days before we could get a truck and trailer to the highway and get them out of here and to our other ranch with the rest of the heifers. Boy 14 hfrs. can sure drink a lot. We had to use hot water, because it was so cold it was all freezing w/in the hour and they would drink it faster than we could pour it in!