Cattle Ponds

[Trey]

From previous experiences with dams i would be inlclined to fence the water source off (though we haven't).

We had a young show bull get his head stuck in the hay ring and he dragged it about 100m in attempt to get his head out. The problem being the 100m was in the dam (to get there he had gone around two 90degree bends and over the steepest side of the dam wall) and consequently the bull drowned.

 

[J-CCCC]

I My partner wants to fill in the ponds. I have a feeling that if he was out in the pasture this summer, he would get pretty mad if I drained it while he was standing in it. I

Chuckie, Tell your partner to wait awhile and the pond will fill with silt. Also, if you were in East Texas now there wouldn't be much need for draining. Nothing wetter than dust has hit my place for weeks. :shock:

Question for the board members. How do you dredge a small pond. I'm looking for something short of having someone dredge it hydraulically (costs too much). Hate to drain, dry and dozer it out.

Has anyone tried or had success draging a dirt/soil scraper across by cable and winch. How about a two inch suction pump discharging into a settling tank. Any other ideas :?:

 

[denoginnizer]

Anyone have trouble with cattle getting stuck in the ponds?

 

[dun]

I My partner wants to fill in the ponds. I have a feeling that if he was out in the pasture this summer, he would get pretty mad if I drained it while he was standing in it. I

Chuckie, Tell your partner to wait awhile and the pond will fill with silt. Also, if you were in East Texas now there wouldn't be much need for draining. Nothing wetter than dust has hit my place for weeks. :shock:

Question for the board members. How do you dredge a small pond. I'm looking for something short of having someone dredge it hydraulically (costs too much). Hate to drain, dry and dozer it out.

Has anyone tried or had success draging a dirt/soil scraper across by cable and winch. How about a two inch suction pump discharging into a settling tank. Any other ideas :?:

Haven't tried the pump and settling method but we've tried dredging and jst digging with a back hoe. The mud (polite term) turns to a slurry and just washes around the bucket. About all it does is thicken the water. What we've done a couple of times is dig another pond next to the old one and cut the dam so that the water runs from the old on into the new one. Then we clean the old one with a dozer and then recut a channel from the olod new one back to the old old one. Makes the pond larger with one end being very deep.
Probably about the same resluts as pumping into a settling basin deal.

dun

 

[Craig-TX]

Normally around here if you're going to overhaul a tank you wait till it's so dry that the you can use a dozer. Otherwise you would need to drain it or use a dragline.

 

[Rafter E]

Last week I dug out our 2 ponds, after sitting dry for 4 months, maybe 5. I rented a 4WD Cat backhoe. Cleaning up around the outer edges worked great, but problems began to limit my effectiveness. The pond near the house has a very hard bottom, if I had more time I could have used the bucket end and dug it deeper, but used the loader end and made little progress. The pond near the barn was another story...mud. Hiding under the 'dry' pond was a clay muck that I got stuck in repeatedly. Wanted to make it deeper, no way to do it short of a big front end loader or dozer. It looks great now, lotsa places all the way around for the cattle to drink, and for us to barbeque...but its not much deeper than before I started

 

[jerry27150]

chuckie & stocky, i had cut water holes early in the morning & went to check them again in the afternoon. one dead would not have bothered me, but there were 11 600lb steers floating in the center of the pond. made me feel a little sick for a while. but we had to figure a way to get the carcasses out before they froze in hard & sunk later. used a long ladder & made a long hook to pull them out

 

[sidney411]

The only water our cows get is from the tanks unless they are locked in the pens. We've never had a tank freeze, it doesn't get that cold, but we have had cows get mired in the mud around the ponds. Expecially this time of year when the water level is dropping and the exposed edges are silty and can cause a suction to form around their legs and belly. We have actualy lost a few this way in the past. You can drag them out with the tractor but the suction is so strong it causes internal damage pulling them out.

 

[jerry27150]

i have pulled some out with truck & tractor, but never noticed any internal damage

 

[stocky]

Jerry, sure am sorry to hear that. It would have made me sick for a lot longer than a little while. The majority of the time I have lost cattle on the ice, it has been yearliings or younger, they seem to want to explore. Once in a while I have had a cow get down, but not often. To be certain, you can fence every pond and leave a little corner to chop ice, but with 40-50 ponds, there isnt the time or money to do that. Sometimes when it is real cold for a long time, I move cattle to spring fed pastures, but there are still some cattle with ponds. But you cant move them all. I have seen, on the river place, as many as 50 cows plus calves walking out on the ice on the river and sleeping on the river where it is about 10 feet deep----talk about making a guy nervous. Ice is not kind to the farmer

 

[Chuckie]

Jerry, that many steers dead would be a tough one to take. Sorry to hear you lost so many. I would really be nervous to find out that 11 were sleeping on a frozen river. It would make you want to call them in to eat, but if they were like the ones here, they all would jump up at the same time, and that wouldn't be good.

 

[sidney411]

Jerry, I'm not saying all that have been pulled out were lost, but I know of 2 cows that were stuck in mud and had worn themselves out and layed down. When they were pulled out you could hear the mud suction, kind of like quicksand I guess. They never got up again and died within a few days. I was told that the pulling on them so hard had caused the internal damage and they bled out.

 

[Rookie]

My cows love they swimmin hole. No way I be takin it away from em!


george

 

[Bama]

I have 6 ponds the cattle drink from there is also a small creek running through part of it. Ya'll are missing the big picture. CATFISH. Ain't nothing like catfish fillets and hushpuppies. I also have water troughs near the barn. These are supplied with well water. The only problem I can recall with the pond was we once had a heifer having a calk in there. No way to get her out in that condition. We pulled the calf with a tractor. Yep a tractor. Not the best thing but it worked. Lost the huge calf but the heifer did have a normal size one on her own after that. This was at least 20 years ago, we ain't had a problem of that sorts since.

 

[Arnold Ziffle]

Welcome to the boards, J-CCCC

Regarding your question about cleaning out a small pond, I'll just relate what one of my buddies did. He already had a tractor and a small scoop that attaches to the 3 pt. hitch, had a good bit of available time and is always short of cash so hiring it done was out of the question. Anyway, during a real dry summer the water level got pretty darn low, so he pumped it out with a Honda trash pump, filling his freezer with fish at the same time. He let the pond dry out and then got in there and dug out the accumulated silt, sand, etc. with the scoop and deposited that material in various low spots in his pastures. I think he also got in there with a pretty heavy disc to break up the bottom a bit. Didn't deepen the pond but essentially restored it to the original depth and, overall, he thought it was very worthwhile undertaking. I guess it all depends on how much time a man is willing to spend doing the work himself and what equipment he has available. By the way, I think those scoops can be bought at TSC for around $200, or maybe borrowed from a friend for free?

On another note, having seen ponds dug both ways, I think a BIG tractor with a scraper is a better rig to use than a dozer for pond work. With the tractor/scraper rig the operator can quite readily deposit the excavated dirt a pretty good distance from the pond site, if you so desire -- and thats much harder for a dozer operator to do. Also, the tractor and fully loaded scraper probably puts more concentrated weight on the ground for compacting the sides, dams, etc. --- dozer weight is too spread out over the tracks.

BAMA -- I sure agree with you about those cats.

 

[Craig-TX]

You're right AZ, those excavators that carry a big load of dirt sure are nice. Around here the problem is rock. If you're digging a new styled tank (not so wide but deep) you've just about got to have a decent sized dozer with a ripper on the back. Nothing else short of dynamite will bust through the layers. It is truly amazing that the old tanks (wide and shallow) were dug with a team and a slip. That is many a load when you consider a good team and a big slip would haul what, a quarter yard per trip? And that's after plowing it as deep as they could to get everything loose enough that the slip could bite it. Those people knew how to work.

 

[J-CCCC]

Thanks to those who responded to dredging pond inquiry.

Arnold Z , I think you hit the nail on the head. I have a smaller pond not far from the one I want to clean out . Think I'll pump water and transfer fish to the smaller one, let it dry a bit then use the scoop and tractor to clean her out. Obviously I have more time than money. In my original post I proposed pulling a soil /dirt scraper across . Actually I intended to refer to a scoop as your friend did; except my plan to pull it thru would as one poster said, turn the water into muck and not move anything.

I'll post results later assuming I, "GET ER DONE". ;-)

JAY

 

[cmfiddler]

Our pond is spring fed so had distinct cold spots. As soon as the weather warms the cows are in cold spots several times a day to drink and cool off. Calves go in early but stay pretty shallow. Never get ice down here so ice walking is not an issue.

With our rains the drainage ditches are full of very warm water and the calves are using them as a playground.

Because there is high ground where the cows can graze and dry, we have had no issues of hoof problems.

 

[Craig-TX]

If you're going to transfer catfish get ready for plenty of w-o-r-k. About four years ago in the last drought we had a tank going dry with some real nice cats in it. When it got down to two or three feet of water we knew time was limited because the bottom of the tank is not that wide, maybe 20 yards, and it was getting so muddy the cows would walk past it and walk another ¾ mile to the next tank. We had to seine those cats for a couple hours before we could catch them. They ran from four to seven pounds and were strong enough (at first) that they would swim and wiggle through the mud under the seine. They finally got so tired they couldn't hardly go and we could catch them. It about wore out yours truly also.

BTW, you also need to be careful about water temp. If there is a substantial difference between tanks (ponds) it will shock them pretty hard and you will loose some.

 

[Farm Angel]

we havea lakes here with our cows.. can't say that any of them have ever fallen in during ice weather.. however keep clear of erosion cliffs... we have lost quite a few calves from the momma having them to close to the water