# Do goats need water overnight?



## Tatswell (Oct 26, 2016)

I have a pair of pygmy goats (brother -wether, and sister) I've adopted earlier this year, happily frolicking on my property. They drink from the stream and eat off the land free ranging throughout the day. They've done this since I've had them. Id like to close them in the barn at night as it is getting below freezing here in new England but doing so means no water for at least 9 hrs. 
I've stacked hay in the barn but without water in the barn, will they be okay for this amount of time while eating?


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## luvmypets (Oct 26, 2016)

I would give them water. They wouldn't need a huge amount, a few gallon bucket should do.


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## NH homesteader (Oct 26, 2016)

They need water to help with digestion. I also live in New England. My goats get water at night,  it freezes overnight but they have it until it does. Can't stay ahead of it without a heated bucket, which I'm hoping  to get this year.


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## Goat Whisperer (Oct 26, 2016)

They absolutely need water overnight. 

I change/re-fill/clean buckets 2-3 times daily. It is always done in the morning and evening. They almost always drink water through the night.  

My goats always drink a bunch of water after eating hay/feed. It would not be wise to let them go without water.

Go to TSC or any other feed store and get a few water buckets


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## babsbag (Oct 26, 2016)

Mine drink a lot of water at night too.


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## Bruce (Oct 26, 2016)

Tatswell said:


> I have a pair of pygmy goats (brother -wether, and sister) I've adopted earlier this year, happily frolicking on my property. They drink from the stream and eat off the land free ranging throughout the day. They've done this since I've had them. Id like to close them in the barn at night as it is getting below freezing here in new England but doing so means no water for at least 9 hrs.
> I've stacked hay in the barn but without water in the barn, will they be okay for this amount of time while eating?


Do you HAVE electricity in the barn? If yes, you can use a heated water bucket.  When I looked that up on Google, I came across:
http://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/showthread.php?242385-Forget-the-heated-water-buckets!-This-works!!

Which led to this:
http://store.wildangelcozy.com/water-bucket-cozy-small/

Someone down a few posts in that forum made an insulated water bucket by putting a bucket inside a larger bucket with spray foam between them.

Plenty of options


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## NH homesteader (Oct 26, 2016)

I don't know about spray foam and goats...


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## Green Acres Farm (Oct 26, 2016)

I use this from TSC:

http://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/little-giant-trough-o-matic-metal-float-valve

I just scrub out algae in water once a week and dump it out every day or two if it's dirty. It's not expensive and saves a lot of time.

I haven't had water freezing problems, though.


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## Bruce (Oct 26, 2016)

Really? No water freezing problems in FLORIDA? I am SO amazed! 



NH homesteader said:


> I don't know about spray foam and goats...



He made a wooden ring to cover the top edges of both buckets, and rounded the edges. Now maybe a goat would chew on the wood, I don't know. I DO know that my chickens aren't safe around rigid insulation, they love to peck it. Wouldn't trust them with access to spray foam either.


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## NH homesteader (Oct 26, 2016)

I have one goat that is a wicked chewer. It's a cool idea though. Might try for the chickens.


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## OneFineAcre (Oct 26, 2016)

When we have really cold weather when we feed in the afternoon we fill buckets with warm water
A couple of ours are like camels
They will drink a half gallon
We refill with even warmer water and they will have water for a while before it freezes
We give warm water in morning too


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## NH homesteader (Oct 26, 2016)

Yep us too. They get water at least 3 times a day in winter.  And I lug it all out of the house in 5 gallon buckets so they'd better appreciate it!


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## Bruce (Oct 26, 2016)

My plan is to use plastic cat litter jugs (Cats Pride fragrance free). I'm not sure how much they hold but ~ 2 gallons each I would guess. No desire to lug a 5 gallon bucket (~ 40 pounds) down to the barn in the snow. Rather be balanced, 1 jug on each side


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## NH homesteader (Oct 26, 2016)

Yeah I do  a 5 gallon pail on each side most of the time. It's not fun.  But we have lots of animals, and pigs drink a LOT of water! 

Is that how much a 5 gallon bucket weighs? I don't feel so bad complaining now!


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## Bruce (Oct 26, 2016)

41.8 pounds if full! Complain away.

But unless you have a cap on it I ASSUME you aren't taking a full 5 gallons in each bucket. Complain anyway. No fun carrying weight through the snow and ice. 

My chickens are easy. They don't drink much and their winter water is in a 5 gallon insulated drink cooler. I just toss in a gallon every week or so to top it off. Will be much different with the 2 alpacas. Sure wish that freeze proof faucet in the barn still worked. Can only guess the plastic line (installed by "do everything on the cheap" prior owner) ruptured. Weird thing is it stopped working BEFORE deep frost. I stopped trying to use it and when I turned the water back on in the spring, the well pump never stopped and no water ever came out of the faucet.


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## babsbag (Oct 26, 2016)

So glad my frozen water mornings are few and far between. I think that last year I had 0 days and maybe 2 or 3 the year before. All my animals have auto water troughs, and if I have to run PVC above ground to do it I do. In the winter I just put pipe insulation on it, but I am sure that wouldn't work in some locations.  I have some garden hose water lines right now since we moved into the new barn. I might have to put pipe insulation on those too. I am NOT hauling buckets, no way, no how, not ever. You guys are tougher than I ever want to be.


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## Bruce (Oct 26, 2016)

We will see! As I said, its been REAL easy with the chickens  I might be whining a bit by February.

It would take a heck of a lot of insulation to keep a PVC pipe from freezing and breaking open at -20F  I can't even use the frost proof spigot that comes out of the house. It just closes far enough back in the crawl space (where the hot air furnace lives) to keep IT from freezing.


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## babsbag (Oct 26, 2016)

Yeah, I figured that my PVC and garden hose would be a short lived fix in places like VT. I couldn't do it, I would have no animals but a few house cats and a bird and be done with it. Good thing DH doesn't know that, he would be moving me to snow country.


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## Green Acres Farm (Oct 26, 2016)




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## Latestarter (Oct 27, 2016)

If you opened the tap Bruce, and the pump ran continuously but no water came out, you have an underground break somewhere along the line. If anything like CO, you'd need to bury that waterline a minimum of 4 feet down to ensure it was below frost line. They do make no freeze drinkers/hydrants for large animals... Not exactly sure how they work, but supposedly they do. When I get the barn built here I will absolutely be running an underground water line to it. Like Babs, no way am I carrying buckets of water. I'm just too danged old and lazy for that anymore.


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## Bruce (Oct 27, 2016)

There WAS running water, that is the confusing part. Worked fine for the first 2 years through the winter. And it was still running through the summer of 2013 when the contractors were rebuilding half the house. They used it to get drinking water. Then in the fall I was getting no water, thought maybe the lifting lever had frozen overnight or something so when it still wasn't working later, I stopped trying and shut it off in the basement. NO idea how far down the plastic pipe is nor what path it takes to get to the barn. It can't be a straight shot because that would mean it had to go underneath the little barn which was built (as were the house and big barn) prior to the US Civil War.

Perhaps one of your animals could be a mule, it could carry water for you  But your life, buried water line wise, will hopefully be a lot easier than it is here. You can likely get away with an 18" ditch digger. My options:

digging under the deck to where it currently comes out (too high for sure) from the basement, going around the propane tank, under the power line from the solar array and behind the little barn to the frost free spigot is in the lower part of the big barn.
as above but going between the house and small barn, under the propane line, the power line from the array and under the powerline from the house to the small barn
Drill underground into the crawlspace (new poured concrete foundation) and connect to the water line in there then run under the power line to the big barn and between the little and big barn down to the spigot.
This would have been SO EASY if I had known it was going to be a problem. The excavator could have dug the trench between the barns for the curtain drain on the east side of the big barn down 4' and put in the water line then the curtain drain pipe over that. The water exit could have been installed in/under the crawl space foundation and the pipe installed when the foundation was done.


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## Latestarter (Oct 28, 2016)

May be cheaper to just drill a well and build a pump house down in the pasture and run electric down there to power it...


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## Bruce (Oct 28, 2016)

Um, not likely! Drilled wells are expensive. So are the pumps that go down into them. Had a problem with my pump. Turned out that after 35 years one of the wires in the aboveground part of the metal pipe arced. NO idea why. The well guy had just enough slack to splice it back together. Since he was there I asked how much will it cost to replace the pump when it does go. About a grand, unless new wire is also needed, then more.

BTW the well is 125' down.


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## animalmom (Oct 29, 2016)

Gee @Bruce, only 125' down?  We've got two wells and both are over 440' and we're lucky with that.  Water, got to have it.


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## Bruce (Oct 29, 2016)

Yep, 125' here, the people up the hill are well over 300' even though the actual elevation change is only about 100'. I'm told that when my well was dug (1979) they had to wait 2 days before they could cap it. Knock on wood that wonderful quantity of water will stick around. 

I just tossed the 125' in the prior message in case anyone wanted to figure out about what it would cost to drill a new well for the barn. General numbers suggest several thousand $$ not including the pump and wiring. For that I can carry a few gallons of water for the alpacas. At least for a while


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## Mike CHS (Oct 29, 2016)

Ours is a little over 1300' deep and no idea what it cost to put in.  High sulfur content that I won't drink anyway.


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## Bruce (Oct 29, 2016)

1,300'?? And for sulfur water? 

Gotta count myself VERY lucky! There are areas in VT with sulphur or nasty amounts of iron that turn the sink rusty red in no time. We have none of that and the water is only minimally hard.


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