Snow replacing water?

[Hillary_Indiana]

Recently, they have declared a snow emergency in my area. This means our waterers are frozen. Do we need to carry water all the way from the house to the barn...or will they just eat the snow and be OK? We're gonna go out and feed later, but it would be a huge hassle to have to bring all that water down to those cows, our horse, and goats. Anyone have any experience with this?

 

[dun]

Unless they're conditioned to it as youngsters they generally don't eat enough snow to give them adequate water. That's been my experience anyway. Keep in mind that 1 inch of snow is only 1/10 of an inch of water, typically. If it's really wet soggy snow it's more, but the light flugffy stuff is much less.

dun

 

[docgraybull]

If the cows are previously conditioned to it, they may eat enough snow. The horse definitely needs fresh water. I don't know about the goat. To be on the safe side, probably should water them all. You might consider an electric water tank de-icer. Just break up the ice, plug it in, and drop it in the tank.

 

[Hillary_Indiana]

we've got two of those. one was very expensive and there is a ball they push down to get a drink. the wind chill is like -8 here, and they've frozen up. we're past the point of breaking that up. i guess we'll just go out there with some 5 gallon buckets and water them all. thanks for the advice.

 

[certherfbeef]

In past drought years we paid the local fire departmant to haul water to the tanks for us. Don't know how that might work in freezing temps. But they came out every day and brought enough for all the cows to get their fill.

 

[kensfarm]

A single 1200 lb beef cow will take anywhere from 8 1/2 gallons to 20 gallons of water per day.. depending on the temp. I took a day off work from my day job and worked all day on frozen water, water lines.

I would try to give them water at least twice a day.. w/ the cold & wind.. they will dehydrate fast. They are depending on you!

 

[dun]

As a side note, the cement ones that are buried except for an area in the front that the cows actually drink from are really slick. At 3 degrees it becomes sort of achedemic that they're "freeze proof", but breaking a small amount and dipping the ice a couple of times a day is sure a lot easier then anything else we've tried. We do have one of those that runs a small stream of water into/onto the water in the bowl. It works good too, but you have to have a pretty good drain system to take that excess water and put it somewhere that the cows won't slip and bust their donkeys on.

dun

 

[eric]

we've got two of those. one was very expensive and there is a ball they push down to get a drink. the wind chill is like -8 here, and they've frozen up. we're past the point of breaking that up. i guess we'll just go out there with some 5 gallon buckets and water them all. thanks for the advice.

What you've got are automatic waterers. What docgreybull was talking about was electric heaters, they install on the side of a metal tank or either sit on the bottom of the tank. You need to run an extension cord to them to power them up, but they work pretty good. Keeps the ice from ever forming. They also sell some which are propane powered if the waterers are too far away from the house or barn to run electricity out to them. never used the propane powered, so cant comment on the reliability of them. You might want to consider a couple of large tanks moved close to your barn or house and buy a couple of hang on the side electric water heaters.

 

[CattleAnnie]

Perversely, we winter our cows and horses almost entirely on snow. The only ones that get total access to water are the bulls and weaned calves and foals.

The only difficulty are times like what we are currently experiencing, where we've gotten chinooks and the snow has been melted away. That's when we chop holes in dugouts and the creek in the pasture, or get the main bunch of cattle and horses up to where they have access to a waterer.

Once the cows start calving, they do have complete access to water, as lactating animals have very high water requirements opposed to breds.


Take care.

 

[Gale Seddon]

We have a couple of Rubbermaid troughs with plug-in heaters in them (uses a lot of electricity, but reliable) as well as several Ritchie automatic waterers. The only problem with them is if you don't have enough cattle drinking from them, the plastic balls freeze up...so when it's snowy and icy, I have to kick them loose so the cows can drink. Guess we need more cows...? After 1" of snow and 9 degrees a couple of days ago, I'm ready for spring.

 

[TLCfromARK]

A single 1200 lb beef cow will take anywhere from 8 1/2 gallons to 20 gallons of water per day.. depending on the temp. I took a day off work from my day job and worked all day on frozen water, water lines.

I would try to give them water at least twice a day.. w/ the cold & wind.. they will dehydrate fast. They are depending on you!

If they're getting free choice hay it will be closer to the 20 gallons a day than the 8 1/2 on the average. I agree about the taking time off from the real world to fix things. Trying to patch / unthaw water lines are bad enough in the daylight, much harder trying to work on them in the dark.

Good luck,
;-)