Water for animals is actually an essential nutrient. It is vital for good health and productivity. Learn how to easily and effectively clean your animal’s water trough so they can benefit fully from their water supply!
Water is the most important nutrient and the least discussed in animal nutrition. We take water for granted because, for most of us, it is readily available. We have it in our homes and we spread it on our lawns. But it deserves more attention when it comes to feeding animals.
Water is just like any other feedstuff – it varies based on origin, location, and season. The water at my house is really, really hard – meaning it has a high mineral content. {Like so high that when we moved in, our toilet bowls were stained red from sitting with water in them and not being flushed for a while, not from lack of cleaning but because of the iron in the water!} Sometimes if you are dealing with a really specific diet or an animal that is having a mineral deficiency/overload, it’s the water! If you are having strange problems with your animals, get your water analyzed. You may be surprised what you find.
So here’s the deal with water quality, it’s variable based on what we discussed above but a big part of water quality depends on management {like most things!}.
Water Cleanliness Rule of Thumb: If you wouldn’t drink from your animals water trough, your animals probably shouldn’t be either.
Now, of course, I don’t mean that your animals shouldn’t drink secondary water sources or from streams. That’s just silly. Obviously, they can do a lot of things we can’t when it comes to eating and drinking. I’m talking about visual cleanliness. If the water trough is gross, clean it!! You wouldn’t want to drink out of a dirty glass, would you? Also, some algae can be dangerous. Generally, blue/green is dangerous {the algae release toxins into the water} and red/brown is ok. But really, we should just clean it all up.
Confession: I am not very good at this. I’m trying to be a lot better this year and so far I’m doing alright! Today I scrubbed all my animals water troughs. And, of course, I forgot to take before photos. Which is convenient because they were still way dirtier than I would have liked! But I promise, it was an accident.
This is what I use to clean my buckets. Nothing too fancy. I think Dawn cleans the best and I use a hard bristle brush along with a strong hose sprayer.
Right now I just have two large buckets out as water troughs for Delilah. They were already here when we moved in and already dirty. It is much easier to keep troughs clean when they don’t ever get too dirty. You can see there is still some algae on the bottom of this one. I need to find a scrubber that gets in little spaces better than the one I have. You can see that there is still stuff on the side of the bucket that I’ll probably have to scrape off. Or I’ll just buy a new {real} water trough. Probably the latter.
I also use rocks to scrape some of the stuff off that is stuck on pretty hard. I usually do a quick spray out every couple of days when I give her fresh water and that helps keep them clean for longer as well.
Here is her other bucket. This one isn’t perfectly clean either but it is cleaner than the other bucket and she actually prefers this one more. Animals do care about clean!
I also got crawled on by about 10 of these babies. Ew. The ecosystem that lives under the water troughs really isn’t my fave.
This is my chicken’s waterer. It is way easy to keep clean because I bought it new and keep it from getting really dirty. Can you see the white streaks? That is hard water staining, not dirt. I could get it off, but it would really be a waste of my time. Hard water staining isn’t a problem but if you want to remove it, vinegar works really well.
I also cleaned the cat’s water bowl. It was the dirtiest. Cat’s are seriously disgusting. I love ’em, but my Animal Health and Hygiene Class ruined me forever thinking of them as clean animals ever again.
Anyways, there you have it! Some tips, a confession, and a new perspective. As a side note, some people keep fish in their troughs to keep the algae away. I would like to try this but I have no idea how it really works and need to do some research. I’ll keep you posted! I’m all for minimizing management with effective symbiotic relationships.
Just remember: If you wouldn’t dip a glass in and take a sip – it needs cleaned! I’m going to be better about this too :).
Pin this farm tip on your Hobby Farming board to SAVE it for later! Follow Longbourn Farm on Pinterest for more great tips, ideas, and tutorials!
[et_bloom_inline optin_id=”optin_4″]
Leave a Reply