How do you deal with frozen water?

[Carla D]

we have several different types of animals on our farm. We struggled with frozen water last year by busting it up and carrying 5 gallon buckets of fresh new water. That’s very time consuming and a bit backbreaking. We have the rubber water dishes so they can be turned over stomped on or kicked around a bit to break up the ice. But that won’t keep us from having to go to the farm multiple times a day during the cold season of winter to make sure the animals have water available. Our barn does have some electricity. We use long extension cords to do almost everything because we only have a couple working outlets in one location of the barn. We really don’t wish to use to uses much electricity to keep it thawed, plus we couldn’t do that for the few animals that don’t have barn access. So how do others deal with frozen water throughout the freezing temperatures of winter? I can’t really find effective ways to deal with this online with the exception of heated buckets, electric coils to stick in the water to either move or heat the water a little bit. Is there any really clever ways people in here keep their livestock/herd/pets water from freezing that is VERY inexpensive to buy or use?

The only thing I can possibly think of is setting water containers on top of a pile of manure and straw/hay mixture. After all our pigs love laying on that when the temperatures get a bit cooler. I’ve seen steam rising from this in the past and the compost/waste is definatly warm when it is cleaned out of pens, stall etc. Would using that material that keep water warm enough to prevent it from freezing on all but the extremely cold or subzero temperatures that happen a few times throughout the winter? Besides it being a bit on the nasty side of functionality how long does the manure/compost mixture stay warm? We do eventually have snow on all of the ground including those areas as well. Do you think that could be a feasible means to prevent freezing throughout most of the winter? We do have running water to these areas most of the year. We run a few hoses from our outside hydrant. But our hoses have already frozen up on us a few times already and it hasn’t gotten any colder than the upper twenties so far. The water in our very drafty old barn hasn’t frozen yet, but it will start happening very soon in there as well. So the hoses we use most of the year should be rolled up and drained about now as well. Has anyone used an expensive heated hose in the winter? Did that work and was it very expensive to use? I can see spending $200-300 for a hundred foot hose if that is an effective means to bring water to our animals versus a dozen or so 5 gallon pails of water to our animals a few times a day. Any thoughts or discoveries that have worked for you?

Is the two tires insulated with a water bucket any use for freezing temperatures?

 

[Mini Horses]

You can build a surround for the water troughs but that does little for those that are "short & small". Works well for the troughs as you see for cattle/horses...they also cover the top with a hole left in that top for animals to reach into. Of course, this has a basis in solar heating. Chickens & pigs, harder job. Heated tubs ARE expensive to run but, often the only option. You are in an area that gets frozen an stays that way for a while. You may want to keep a large heated tub in the barn and dip from it to water -- still carry but --- on site. I am set up with electrical options in several barns.

I look at my options here and carry hot to some tubs in mornings, which stay open all day. IF we get to days that have freeze temps all day I run the tubs! Generally I don't have that often but sometimes run the heaters at night only...which keeps it open all day. Yeah, I have a LOT of gallon jugs to use. If snow on ground a flat bottom sled helps haul it all.

When you have 5 gal buckets freeze solid, you just have to haul or bite the bullet and heat! A heated hose can help BUT you still need to drain them to be efficient....so I've read from those living in extremes.

 

[Carla D]

You can build a surround for the water troughs but that does little for those that are "short & small". Works well for the troughs as you see for cattle/horses...they also cover the top with a hole left in that top for animals to reach into. Of course, this has a basis in solar heating. Chickens & pigs, harder job. Heated tubs ARE expensive to run but, often the only option. You are in an area that gets frozen an stays that way for a while. You may want to keep a large heated tub in the barn and dip from it to water -- still carry but --- on site. I am set up with electrical options in several barns.

I look at my options here and carry hot to some tubs in mornings, which stay open all day. IF we get to days that have freeze temps all day I run the tubs! Generally I don't have that often but sometimes run the heaters at night only...which keeps it open all day. Yeah, I have a LOT of gallon jugs to use. If snow on ground a flat bottom sled helps haul it all.

When you have 5 gal buckets freeze solid, you just have to haul or bite the bullet and heat! A heated hose can help BUT you still need to drain them to be efficient....so I've read from those living in extremes.

This is the exact type of information I was looking for. Thank you. We may have to bite the bullet and buy heated buckets for our smaller animals like the goat, kitties, and rabbits. I do question if there is a heated option that would work for our pigs. A few of them have ideas of their own and would probably bust even stronger versions of those in no time. But they could be very effective for our small critters, maybe not even cost too much since they are barn animals and be a smaller amount of water to work with. That alone would save us some time and human energy for hauling buckets to the pigs. Thank you for your input.

 

[mysunwolf]

We love our heated buckets for cats and dogs and chickens. We use birdbath heaters for larger stock tanks for our sheep and cattle, that works great too.

Pigs I would use a heated nipple barrel. Basically a large water barrel, install a pig nipple at the bottom, train them to that, then submerge a bird bath heater in the winter so it doesn't freeze. That way they can't get to the cord or heating elements.

I'd rather use a bunch of electricity each winter than haul buckets. Now when the power goes out, we have to heat water on propane burners and use a crow bar to bust ice, so that's never fun.

 

[Carla D]

We love our heated buckets for cats and dogs and chickens. We use birdbath heaters for larger stock tanks for our sheep and cattle, that works great too.

Pigs I would use a heated nipple barrel. Basically a large water barrel, install a pig nipple at the bottom, train them to that, then submerge a bird bath heater in the winter so it doesn't freeze. That way they can't get to the cord or heating elements.

I'd rather use a bunch of electricity each winter than haul buckets. Now when the power goes out, we have to heat water on propane burners and use a crow bar to bust ice, so that's never fun.

I like that idea of a bucket with a pig nipple. I don’t think it would take much to teach them how to use it either. I’m kinda like you when it comes down to hauling buckets. I’d much rather pay an increased bill for electricity that would probably be between $50-100. My husband and FIL are a bit stronger physically than I am. They could handle carrying a couple of buckets to the boys outside but, it would likely take me about three trips with to haul partial buckets, especially if I have to hold my daughters hand or carry her through deeper snow. The indoor ones wouldn’t be quite as bad because that’s where our water source is located. Could even possibly buy a shorter heated hose. For the pigs and piglets in the barn. That’s where our biggest challenge will be, the pigs. Our pigs are pretty rough on things. It’s our full grown sows that are the worst.

 

[Carla D]

You can build a surround for the water troughs but that does little for those that are "short & small". Works well for the troughs as you see for cattle/horses...they also cover the top with a hole left in that top for animals to reach into. Of course, this has a basis in solar heating. Chickens & pigs, harder job. Heated tubs ARE expensive to run but, often the only option. You are in an area that gets frozen an stays that way for a while. You may want to keep a large heated tub in the barn and dip from it to water -- still carry but --- on site. I am set up with electrical options in several barns.

I look at my options here and carry hot to some tubs in mornings, which stay open all day. IF we get to days that have freeze temps all day I run the tubs! Generally I don't have that often but sometimes run the heaters at night only...which keeps it open all day. Yeah, I have a LOT of gallon jugs to use. If snow on ground a flat bottom sled helps haul it all.

When you have 5 gal buckets freeze solid, you just have to haul or bite the bullet and heat! A heated hose can help BUT you still need to drain them to be efficient....so I've read from those living in extremes.

Yes. I’d seen those too. But like you I couldn’t see it working for shorter animals. Even the big pigs water is only a foot above the ground.

 

[WolfeMomma]

We don't have electricity in our barn yet or water, so we have to run very long extension cords from the chicken coop that has power , over to the barn and carry 5 gallon buckets of water. We use those big steel heating coils, we don't have a choice those big livestock watering bins can't be dumped out easy, so I'm more then willing to pay the electric bill so that I only have to carry out buckets of fresh water once and a while and not everyday.

 

[goatboy1973]

We run a long extension cord and use tank heaters. Before this, we floated half full gallon jugs of water in our watering troughs the water would freeze around them and then the next morning we would remove vw the jugs and there would be huge holes in the ice which the goats could use to drink water.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

great idea!

 

[Carla D]

I wanted to share what we finally figured out about our water situation during the cold winter months. About three weeks ago our outdoor hydrant froze up and we were unable to get it thawed. For a while we were hauling buckets from the farmhouse to water our animals.

Our hydrant is only about 2-2.5’ tall. Pretty short. Too short to stick a 5-gallon bucket under. This is how we’ve kept it and the very short hose which we now keep attached to it from freezing up on us again. We have a food grade plastic barrel that has one end cut off and a hole cut out of the side of it. The hole is half way up the barrel and is 8-10” in diameter. We added a brooder light to it with the cord sticking out of the hole on the side. This setup is turned upside down and placed over our hydrant with the light plugged in. It actually gets warm enough to melt the solid layer of ice on the ground from our using the hydrant. We have not had a frozen hydrant or hose since we started doing this. The idea came out of nowhere from me one day. The barrel is actually something we made as a catch bucket when we grind and transfer whole grain from our trailer into the holding container we store our crushed grains in. So now something we made for farm use now has multiple functions. That’s always a good thing. I’ll try to remember to take a picture of our setup when we go out there this morning. We are still hauling buckets to water our critters. I’ve talked my husband into having tank or bucket heaters next winter. We’re going to buy them through out this year so having heated water doesn’t break the bank with the initial cost of obtaining them. We’re going to need quite a few of them for our pigs, goats, kitties. But then we need to figure out what to do for the rabbits and chickens next winter.