Not looking forward to winter :( .......How do you do things??

[wackwack]

omg i cant believe ye have all those heated troughs etc. in ireland the last 2 winters have been pretty bad, we're used to very wet but not very cold. we had 6 weeks straight last winter without water. for a while we had a hose pipe running from the bathroom out the window and filling water barrels. we had 33 horses, thats a LOT of water. i used to keep that hose in the hot press in the house, as if i let it out the window for even 10 mins while i brought the water down it was frozen solid, then i had to bring it upstairs and put it in a bath of hot water to thaw. it was a night mare. on christmas day all our taps were frozen as were any within 20 mins drive on lethal roads so on christmas morning we were at the river down the road in our rubber boots filling 25l barrels to bring up to the horses. we used approx 40-50 25l barrels a day, we only had 5, as that was all that we could get anywhere, no one ever expected the cold we got.
this year i am down to 17 horses but now also have the ducks, but i also have no help, i canot lift the barrels when full as have arthritis and dont have the strength so i have to 3/4 fill them and do more trips. The ice in the horses troughs would freexe about 3-5 inches thick over night and after i break it in the morning, by lunch its frozen soild again. some horses figured out they could put their foot in and break it but some got hurt and some destroyed the troughs as they cracked.

i am NOT looking forward to it!! hopefully it wont be as cold this year......

 

[Amiga]

Do you compost?

This may sound complicated, but bear with me - I have read about this being done. Also, if you have limited space this isn't going to work.

Some folks, those who keep nice hot compost piles, coil a hose deep in the pile where it stays warm year 'round. A hot compost gets above 100 degrees F (38C), and they use the water for showers.

I don't have a clue what your place looks like, but if you have horses and old hay and straw and poultry, it seems to me you could have a pile that remains above freezing in the middle of it, and may be able to store a barrel or three in it, which you could tap for water in the worst parts of winter.

You'd need some help (I do just about all the labor at my little place, and I do relate to physical limitations). But it seems to me that if you could get or make barrels (used food grade barrels) and put taps near the bottom or a pump at the top (I have both types), there's your deep winter drinking water, at least for the ducks. Heap alternating layers of straw, hay, and manure around the barrels and the composting process, if done well, could supply you with enough heat to keep it from freezing.

I need to set up something similar because I am a little concerned that our new manual well pump may have icing issues if we get an extended deep freeze right after a big rain event (in New England, this happens). In my case I am considering using small barrels of water set into mulch or something like that to insulate the half meter of pipe that would have water in it after a rain.

 

[wackwack]

i do have the muck heap from all the stables, but i would have to keep the water barrels burried under it all, and have a hose coming out to get the water from them, and that would freeze...hmm...last year before the worst of it we got a 300gallon oil drum thing that hadnt been used, we stored it in a shed, covered in loads of horse blankets etc, we could then fill that every day with the hose from the bathroom before the house froze, but eventually even the water in the oil drum froze no matter what we tried. this year i am just going to have to get lots and lots more barrles (soon!) and do less trips, we are on well water, but on the mains water the pub 10 mins away had water un to xmas eve as they used so much and supplied the whole village!
i am going to get big 30g drums and put them out before the rain comes by each trough and collect rain water, then when the pipes freeze hopefully on the days we do have help we can make extra trips from the house and fill them so i can use it to top up on my bad days.
buying all the barrels is expensice, the 25l ones last year cost me about €30 each i dunno, maybe $20? i had to drive for 3 hours to get them, normally a hour trip, but also we are not used to driving in such conditions! it was scary!!! we would also get a big freeze after a hard rain or after a thaw, and for a finish the roads to my farm (hills on both sides

) had about 2 inches of solid ice on them, not even my quad could get up one hill lol
i am just going to be prepared, i have put down 2 areas of bark mulch for the horses which will freeze but it will have a bit or grip dow to being uneven, and am buying salt and barrels each week to take the edge off the cost. this past week the night temps have really dropped, 2*c at 7am this morning, coldest so far, but we have a lot of rain coming again on sat for a week.
i must stop thinking about winter now! i had blocked it out! i am going with the theory that if i am over prepared it wont happen !!!!


sorry if i have hijacked this thread!!

 

[D'Angelo N Va.]

Just the thought of winter makes me cringe...u don't want it but I know it has to come

 

[wackwack]

and it has to come, to go away again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[craftymama86]

I hope to see a lot more ideas on this thread. We don't have electricity in our coops so I also need ideas. Last year we had a heat lamp in our old coop and it helped a lot. We recently moved though and no power outlets close to our coops so I'm not sure what we'll be doing just yet... Actually, where we have our new chickens it's not even an enclosed "coop". It's just a pen with nest boxes. BUT we do still have our old coop (not being used right now) so I may just run an extension cord, hehe, out to it and put the heat lamp in there, LOL. If I do that then I need to figure out what to do with the other coop. We don't get much snow where we live.. So, yeah, lol....

 

[Going Quackers]

Quote:
Are you able to run any hydro at all? as i said my trough for my horses is hooked up with a heater.. i still have to haul water from the house but at least i know what is out there is accessible. I cannot imagine hauling water for that many horses!

 

[Miss Lydia]

Quote:
Ducks chickens geese etc. don't need heat, and heat lamps are a fire hazzard, They wear down remember.

 

[Going Quackers]

I do know those heavy duty rubber bowls/buckets take longer to freeze solid, learned that with the horses... I have some in the duck barn right now for water.. curious to see if there frozen this morning.. i'm -2C.. beyond that i am truly lost what to do.. we found we couldn't keep it open for the horses and eventually ran hydro so we could use water heaters... we prepared to do the same for the ducks insuring their housing was close enough to run electricity.

What the heck did they do in the olden days before hydro?

 

[Amiga]

In the olden days, from what I've been told, there was quite a bit of mortality. It was considered part and parcel of having animals. For me, I'd rather work a bit to keep the animals I have already raised, trained, fed, nursed and bonded with as healthy as possible rather than start over all the time.

Going way back, in some places, animals got the first (dirt) floor, people the next one up, and straw and hay were on top.

Speaking of winter . . . here it comes!!!!