Yesterday was a rough one

[Rosalind]

My neighbor who has 25-30 cows wraps a hot water line from the house in heat tape, then hooks it up to this copper tubing recirculating contraption. Sort of like a chiller used in brewing, it's a long thin copper pipe coiled around that recirculates hot water instead of cold. You can get them at the local feed stores up here. And he also does the Viking thing, where you just keep the critters indoors until a thaw happens. The longest you'd ever have to keep them in would be, hmm, maybe 3 weeks. Our barn also has a really really old woodstove (now disconnected as it wasn't very efficient), so that if I needed hot water in a pinch for critters, I could always fire it up and put big metal water troughs on the concrete pad around it.

My low-tech method for a small flock of poultry is this: I have two waterers, and one is raised off the floor on two layers of bricks. The other, with an additional layer of bricks, is kept in the house to thaw while the one in the coop freezes gradually. The bricks sit by the woodstove all day/night, soaking up heat but not getting so hot they warp the waterer. Twice a day, I exchange the waterer and the top layer of bricks, sometimes only once a day if temps are 25-32F and things stay sorta thawed. The thermal mass of the bricks works pretty well, and best of all it is free--electricity is expensive.

 

[Buster]

Sounds like a chore! If everything goes how I want it to this year we will have 8 or 9 chicken waterers to tend here this summer in the heat and this winter in the cold.

How do your 5 gallon waterers hold up in the negative temps? I have three of them but stopped using them and started putting out buckets when our temps dropped that low.

 

[Tuffoldhen]

MP, anyway to run electricity and use stock trough heaters?

I just have the chickens now and use heated dog water bowls but when we lived on the farm we had to do the same things every winter 4 or 5 times a day for some animals. Especially the sheep and goat. The cows and horses would go to the pond. Sometimes it had to have the ice cracked on it!!

I even keep a birdbath heater in the goldfish pond.

Brrrrrrr...............

 

[MissPrissy]

I have electricity out there but we are still working on the water set up.

I bought these huge food grade barrels - 58 gallon size. They are made out of stuff similar to rubbermaid stock tanks. We want to use those to facilitate auto watering. We plan to plug them with a stock tank heater that rubbermaid makes for their tanks. It is a floating heater with a wire grid around it to keep it off the sides of the barrell. We have only been able to find one. I need 4 - 5 more. Next winter I hope to have everything under control with the flip of a switch.

The hard part is collecting all the stuff and having it ready for when my DH has time to work on things.

The past 2 weeks he finished new stalls in the barn and worked on some birthing jugs. It's almost lambing season!

 

[HorseFeathers]

Aw, MP

 

[Katy]

Isn't hauling water from the house "great"?

I have to haul water from the house pretty much everyday of the winter since I don't have a hydrant anywhere near my pens. In the summer I run a hose, but come winter that doesn't work too well. I haul water in big kitty litter jugs to 10 different chicken pens at this point in time at least twice a day when it's below freezing. When we lose electricity we have no water so I haul it from down in the cow lot where we've got a windmill that pumps water for the cattle. My husband just shakes his head and asks me if I'm tired of doing it yet.

Winter with stock is a lot of work. I just hope the crazy weather we've been having settles down before we start calving. These temp swings are terribly hard on the animals.

 

[English Chick]

I don't know if it will help with yourextreme temps over there, but what we don for the water troughs in the fields so we dont have to go and break ice is to put a wad/bisquit of good straw in the through itself....it stops the ice forming...dont know how how but is does, they same thing applies to the pond for the wildlife in the field by the house, the bigger the pond or trough the more wads of starw it will need.....it might work for you over there...hope so @hugs

 

[gumpsgirl]

I was right there with you girl, except all I had to haul water for was the chickens, goats, and a dog! Thank heavens that cold snap has let up some and I sure hope and pray it stays away!

 

[Wildsky]

I have to carry water for the animals every day, the ducks and chickens get it twice, morning and afternoon. The horse and goat once a day.
I fill and carry 2 cat litter buckets full at a time, I have to use 4 buckets to fill the duck "pond" (rubber tub) the horse and goat also get 4 buckets, the one heated waterer gets filled ever second day.
The water is my thang, hubby does the feed and scoops poop.

On days when the windchill is -30 or so, its amazing how fast I can get that done!
Last year we didn't have a de-icer for the horse and goat, so I would have to fill it twice a day for them, this year we bought a HUGE trough thing and we try fill it to the brim when the day warms up over freezing and the hose thaws out. Those are my lucky days - yesterday was LUCKY for me. We went up to 46!

 

[onthespot]

Anyone here ever seen or used one of these? I live in So Cal, so I don't need one but they sure look like it might just be the trick for you all in Cold Country. Goofy name, but looks like it would save a lot of work.
http://www.horsedrinker.com/?gclid=CN2_5sK20o4CFRXZYAodJHI5pw