water management

[DPANTOJA]

I would appreciate any Ideas on how to manage water. My dad and I have a ranch in Mexico and I think it would be a good Idea to by a water tank for the dry season. I would need a tank big enough for pasture irrigation for the dry season and for the cattle.
We have a couple of ponds. Water comes out of them year round, but get plug with the cattle. I want to be able to capture water when it rains and maybe fill up the tank with the ponds.

 

[frenchie]

I would appreciate any Ideas on how to manage water. My dad and I have a ranch in Mexico and I think it would be a good Idea to by a water tank for the dry season. I would need a tank big enough for pasture irrigation for the dry season and for the cattle.
We have a couple of ponds. Water comes out of them year round, but get plug with the cattle. I want to be able to capture water when it rains and maybe fill up the tank with the ponds.

There was a show on TV (agribiz)the other night here. That had farmers in Austrailia or N.Z using covers over their ponds to cut down on evaporation in the dry season to almost zero..without out a cover evaporation losses were as high as 1/3 of the ponds capacity.The tarp they were using was white on the outside and black on the bottom and was sort of like bubblewrap with a few slots in it to let rain water in.I believe they said this material was used to cover some types of swimming pools.

 

[Calman]

not trying to be a smart a$$ but how in the world would you cover a pond with a tarp? Some of our ponds are 1.5 acre and more.

Cal

 

[dj]

float it maybe? don't think you you span them.

 

[marimus]

float it maybe? don't think you you span them.

Here in Aussie we do both, depending on how much they want to spend. Some areas evaporation is over 100% (the average evaporation is 90% for australia) so without a cover, you very quickly have no water.

Spans are done with high tensile steel cable supporting the cover (you can even walk on them).

The floating type is like bubblewrap. I think these are cheaper, but don't last as long.

They are a major capital investment, but for things like orchards water is money.

http://www.fabricsolutions.com.au/evaporative_covers.htm
http://www.fabtech.com.au/reservoir.html

I can't find a link to the supported type (I saw the photo of a guy standing on it in the newspaper).

And yes, some very large water storages are covered with these.

 

[Beaver]

I would appreciate any Ideas on how to manage water. My dad and I have a ranch in Mexico and I think it would be a good Idea to by a water tank for the dry season. I would need a tank big enough for pasture irrigation for the dry season and for the cattle.
We have a couple of ponds. Water comes out of them year round, but get plug with the cattle. I want to be able to capture water when it rains and maybe fill up the tank with the ponds.

Check out this link
http://www.fao.org/ag/AGL/aglw/farmerwa ... uppmat.htm . hope you'll find it very useful

 

[Hippie Rancher]

Hi Neighbor,

Where are you? I am on the San Pedro river watershed, in SE Arizona - Texas Canyon to be exact.

I haven't tried it but I dream of (re) fencing our dirt tanks off and putting a pipe somehow through the dams (or siphon over the top?) into a trough for the livestock to keep them out of the water and allow natural plants to establish. I would say if you are thinking of any kind of plastic cover to make sure the fencing is tight - cows sure love to chew/eat plastic