Good Clean Water

We have had to come up with a way to provide clean water to our horses, cows and bucks that are in the front pasture. This pasture has a pond, but the pond looks extremely nasty. Unsanitary watering areas can wreak havoc on your animals ( take it from us....we've been there and done that ). Shane put an old empty protein lick tub out in the field and drove a t-post to give it support on the back side. Water is being brought in from a hose attached to a faucet at the back of our house. The hose is connected to a float that we attached to the tub which will provide a constant level of water. As the animals begin to drink the water, the level decreases which in turn causes the float to move and release more water to keep it full. It's actually quite nice. I can remember a time when we had to haul water in 5 gallon buckets.......Can you imagine how many trips that would take to keep them with water? I don't even want to think about it right now....

Shane covered the hose with a 4" PVC pipe cut in half and turned over to keep the animals from getting tangled up in the hose.  We have been using this for a week now and it is working out pretty good.  You wouldn't think that 40+ cows could manage to drink from this small tub, but they have learned that the water is always there.  They come up in different little groups during the day, sometimes just one will make the trip to get water.

The float is the silver box

It's real nice to have a water source nearby to connect to.  We still have quite a few acres that do not have access to a water source.  About a year and a half ago, Shane added a  few water pads to some of our pastures to try them out ( click here to see them, they are on the lower part of this page) .  They are really great to have because you can rotate your pastures more efficiently when you have a water source readily available.  Without a source of water, you are kind of limited to how you are able to have the area grazed.

By the way, I haven't forgotten about putting the buck test information up....I'm just trying to get it all together.  Please bear with me :)