Dexter Cattle For Sale Discussion Board

the last two days all our ground has been frozen, its very nice to be able to get around for once minus all the mud, but the down side of it is all my water freezes outside, so its back to thawing out pipes and filling up tanks with the hose pipes, I can't make up my mind if its worth spending a lot of money on insulating all my pipes, or should I just buy an easier hose pipe system as I'm always hopeful it will only last a few days! I guess the only plus side this year is our silage is so wet that the cattle are not drinking to much water. How is everyone else copying?

Outside the only supply running is in the new shed - definitely worth getting the pipes underground, but we're now having to bucket water from the new shed to the old one. The pipes in our caravan have also frozen but luckily we have a toilet in the office, sadly not a shower. Last year the pipes in the butchery froze but so far so good in there. Getting the old shed renovated is high on the priority list for this year, then hopefully it will be the end of bucketing.

We were replacing the drainage pipe under our drive this week (ready for the deluge when all this melts) and exposed our neighbour's main water supply pipe in the process. It was only 18 inches down but that made all the difference & it didn't freeze overnight. It's safely covered back in now though.

We keep a hose running slowly into IBC's. Then move the IBC around to where they are required or just go round and fill tanks from them. Obviously you need a tractor or tele-handler with tines to do this. This has worked for us in temperatures down to -18C but when it was seriously cold, we had to turn the outlet on the IBC upside down each morning and pour in hot water. Only takes a minute usually.

For horses and sheep in barns, we put a large bale down and plonk a full IBC on top with the spout over a tank, or just use it to fill buckets, which it does in an instant.

Best way is to fit a inline tap near to trough, then slow the water flow to a trickle, the key to success with this method is to get the flow adjusted so the trough is nearly always filling but the cattle never run dry, easiest to start with a empty trough and slow flow, paul

We are on a water meter so don,t leave hoses running! If you really have a problem a mound of nice hot dung round the inlet and when really bad round the tank works wonders!