Water Question

[novaman]

How much will it cost to set up water to use that FREE water in the ponds?

Thats what I was thinkin Dun 8)

That free water will be gone during droughts. Many producers in this area last year couldn't use pastures because of drought (lack of water not lack of grass).

 

[S&WSigma40VEShooter]

Also,


Having my cows on city water allows for a bigger tax write off come tax season.

 

[chippie]

Also,


Having my cows on city water allows for a bigger tax write off come tax season.

You keep your cattle in town?

 

[dyates]

My cows ain't in town, but we have city water county wide. I prefer not to water cattle out of city water because of the bill. There's something about it that the cows love though. They literally walk past creeks and ponds to drink the city water when I have it turned on. I have used it as an alternative to feed to lure them into the barn lot.

 

[stocky]

We have springs and or ponds in every pasture. The bigger pastures 100-200 acres, have several ponds. The only piped water we use is in the pens. This is year round for the last 50 plus years with no problems. The problems coming now are that the springs are getting real low and some of them drying up because there has been so much of an explosion in population in our area and there are so many new wells it is lowering the water table. That is getting alot worse and going to cause major headaches. Like Angus said, it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to run dig wells and run water lines to all the cattle. When you figure over 30 ponds plus the springs and streams where the cattle water, it would cost a fortune to put in the waterers and also some ponds were hard to get to hold, so if you break the seal, it might not ever hold again. After watering this way and never having a problem, it is hard to justify spending a huge amount of money to fix something not broken. Also those waterers take some time and money for upkeep, I have never seen on that a neighbor wasnt having trouble with at one time or another. It may be foolish, but every time I hear one of them complain about having to dig out or fix a waterer, I just think, there is way too much to do than to spend a minute messing with a waterer.

 

[redcowsrule33]

All it takes is one Johnes cow crappin in the water to infect all the calves and then you have an expensive problem. Seen it happen too much to be comfortable with it.

 

[brenda]

Yea, we use ponds while they are in the pastures, when they're brought up to work or to keep up, then they have the automatic watering troughs. That's about all everybody around these parts have is ponds.

 

[Douglas]

There will come a day when the EPA will force us to fence out the ponds. When there are problems in our state with the lakes and rivers, bacteria and fish kills, farmers are always blamed.

I have also seen very costly repairs to pond dams from years of damages from cattle chipping away at the banks. I have a pond that will be cheaper to fence the cows out and provide clean water than repair the dam.

Edit: in our state major dam repairs require bringing the dam up to spec. required by the state. Some people have just let the pond drain out rather than spend the huge sums to bring them up to code.