I know as farmers (and possibly more you men folk) we love to learn from each other the nitty gritty practical ways that we address certain things on the farm. So this week I thought I might start a conversation about stock water delivery and share what we’ve been up to here at ‘The Conscious Farm’. We have a fair variety of troughs and water delivery systems, which you will see. I want to share with you the relative success and downfalls of each and their influences on the land regeneration that we want to achieve.
Our farm consists of black soil plains, sloping red soil country with scattered timber and timbered, less productive hill country. On the plains and some of the sloping country we have portable water troughs and smaller paddock sizes – this is our most favoured system. Some of the sloping country also has smaller blocks, but with a central point that stock water from. The hill country has around 200ha hectares of land that all still comes back to the one watering point – and this is something we would like to change. I will share with you the merits of each system what we have done to optimise each one – given that some systems are less than ideal.
This blog will address water delivery systems, so I won’t go into the details of water quality here today – but be aware that this is a very important factor in stock performance. I might look at that on another occasion.
We have loved the many benefits that rotational grazing has brought to our pastures and farm. As part of this system change, it has meant that we had to alter some of our water delivery systems.
Traditional water delivery systems
Traditional grazing and water delivery systems often means that the part of the paddock closest to the water is overgrazed, while the corner of the paddock furthest from the water is undergrazed – both resulting in poor pasture productivity and diversity. Cattle often camp around the water point, depositing the nutrients from their manure and urine in this area – neglecting the rest of the block and ‘fouling’ the area around the water with intense nutrient concentration. Below is a photo of a trough at the base of our hill country, that waters 200ha. Certainly less than ideal! There is marshmallow surrounding the trough, a result of overgrazing and a I would suggest a high nitrate environment (due to the urine concentration).
Difficult to see, but we have also had a fair share of wiregrass just slightly up the hill, where the pasture has been overgrazed with the constant tracking back to water. If you’re not familiar with wiregrass, I’m sure you all have your own version of it – something that is relatively unpalatable, a lower order plant and crops up when grazing is less than ideal. To improve the water on this section of the farm will be a major project – needing a tank higher up etc, but while we haven’t incorporated new water infrastructure in this area of the farm yet, we have done what we can. To optimise productivity given the water system that is there, we have subdivided some of the hill country and creating lanes back to the water. While not ideal, it is all about improving from the previous system, and the laning in this area has prevented overgrazing through the lower subdivisions as animals return to water. This change has had a marked improvement on the density of the pastures, but we still look forward to a better system in the future.
Laned paddocks and Central Water Point
Our change to rotational grazing meant that we then had larger mob sizes to supply stock water to. This is because we combined mobs to achieve more control over grass recovery and greater animal impact on the ground. It also meant that we wanted to make some paddocks smaller or to temporarily subdivide existing paddocks and we then needed stock water in each of these. So, how to achieve this? We originally laned some paddocks back to a common water point, while a couple of other paddocks had a common water point in the middle of a block which all subdivisions either directly adjoined or led to via a short lane.
Our experiences with this made us realise that we just had to get water in each subdivision block. When stock were in the paddock that was laned, they would feed, move down to water, drink and then sit down at the water point. Upon standing they would deposit the nutrients in their urine and manure around this water point (rather than spread over the paddock). The lane also meant that any intense animal action was lost – while the blocks were small, the animal intensity was lost due to the animals’ ability to spread out along the lane. There was also the disadvantage of cattle tracking along the lane way. All less than ideal situations.
The water system that delivered to a central point around a number of subdivisions was achieved with a couple of cup and saucer troughs – as seen below.
The advantage of this, and why we initially chose this option for some paddocks, is that the high flow rates needed to supply many cattle is provided by the tank component of the trough, and infrastructure costs on piping to achieve good flow rates can be avoided. We still however have the issue of scarring around the trough – as you can plainly see.
Portable Water
The portable water is our most favoured system, because it achieves the best outcomes for the land and stock. The beauty of a portable system is that the majority of stock tracks leading back to water and scarring around the trough are eliminated, because they track to a different place each graze of the paddock. We have such a system in place across our black soil plains and much of our sloping country, with a main arterial pipe line through the centre of many of the paddocks. This has delivered fast flow water direct to the water points, through 63mm and 75mm (2.5 & 3″) polyethylene pipe. We set this up with the desire to achieve flow rates of at least 2L/second; fast flow rates are really important watering large numbers of stock off smaller troughs. (We employed the services of a consultant to help with flow rates over different falls, pipe lengths, pipe diameter required and pump sizes. This is something I would suggest – to make sure you get it right).
We have access points to this main line every 200-300 metres (600-900′). At these points we have installed covered inspection boxes and 50mm (2″) ball valves to access the water from this main line. We use a cam lock coupling system and a short section of heavy fuel line for flexibility to connect to a 30 metre (90′) section of 63mm (2.5″) pipe. This lays on the ground out to a portable trough, which is also coupled with the flexible fuel line and cam lock fittings. Because it lays on top of the ground, this pipe section is thicker walled (PN10) and able to withstand the scuffs of cattle hooves (and accidental drive overs! – which have occurred before among tall grass).
We have several different portable troughs, which we have adapted over time – but all can be readily moved behind a 4 wheeled motorbike or ute.
We began with a small poly sheep trough mounted and rigged up with an axle and tow bar – as seen below. The trough is relatively inexpensive and what is saved on troughs (as you only need a couple per farm), can be spent on pipe to achieve the high flow rates required. The beauty of this is that it can also water both cattle and sheep.
We have since made one twice the size, using two poly sheep troughs which the water flows between via short lengths of 2″ threaded pipe through tank flanges.
The two poly troughs meet in the middle where the axle balances the trough. There is a trailer jack at each end to level the trough – both of which swing up and click out of the way when transporting. There is a barrier down the middle of the trough to prevent cattle ‘eyeing off’ when drinking from this narrow water source.
Now I must give credit to my husband Derek and his father Sandy for making these troughs and for keeping on tinkering to get them just right.
We used to have problems with cattle rubbing on the permanent handle that was used to level the jacks at each end. This would result in a trough that was not level (and would then flow over). We have all but eliminated such problems and after various systems – this seems the best to prevent that.
Losing things in the grass is always an issue, so we hang the handle onto the trough with a D-clip.
Likewise we have a small chain that we keep attached to the back of the trough. When we move the trough, we uncouple the length of pipe and lift it up to be held by the chain and dragged to the next site along behind the trough.
But it doesn’t always go to plan!!
On this occassion in our black cracking soil on a very dry 9th June this year, we had a slight leak; this softened the soil enough that the soil collapsed in on the crack – lowering a wheel into it and the rest is history!
Now, I have several reasons for showing you this, 1. to show that we are all human and have challenges but mostly 2., I wanted to show you what happened afterwards.
16th June 29th June
14th July 15th August
29th August Yesterday
You can see from this the recovery that has taken place is great – from what has been a bit of a disaster. Whilst not completely healed yet, (wait for the summer grass growth), the trough can be placed in a different spot for subsequent grazings – allowing the pasture to fully recover. Now imagine this was a permanent trough (and overflows do happen from time to time with a permanent trough), the cattle will be tracking back over this same area – preventing the pasture from properly recovering.
You can see below with this trough that had just been moved to a new block, that there is no tracking or bare soil around it.
The troughs have a bung in the bottom through which the water can be emptied in order to move the trough. This trough draining actually provides wonderful moisture for those plants that have been trampled around the trough to start the recovery process immediately. Because this trough is regularly moved, there is the opportunity to clean them out with every move, meaning stock have beautiful clean water always available.
Such troughs are starting to become available commercially now.
With a system like this – we need to think about how reliable our water source storage is, because if we are relying on the trough filling on cue any time of the day, the tank and system that we are pumping or reticulating from needs to be reliable.
Planned grazing systems don’t need to be made complicated – especially starting out, keep it simple. This may involve keeping all paddocks the same as they currently are, and just combining a few mobs that are moved such as to allow pastures to recover after each grazing. Once we have more cattle in a mob however, we have to make sure that we have enough water access for them all.
If you have other examples of water delivery systems that you would like to share – email me with descriptions and/or pictures. I can send out a follow up blog mid-week to share any ideas.
Until next week, Keep your minds ticking and let your friends know about The Conscious Farmer Blog – then we will get more interaction for things like the above – ie. different people’s trough ideas and we will all benefit more.
Kirrily
Glad to see that even the most conscious of of operators have wrecks. I also use laneways to my troughs, having used portables in the past but found them too problematic. My cattle mostly have a bit of Bossy in them so walking a klm or more from the trough to the far corner of the pdk is not an issue, and this seems to encourage the shorter legged breeds in the mob to make the trek as well. If they happened to have been born onto a pastoral property instead of a farm they would have to walk a lot further. I build a trough with a cement apron as the sand that we ” farm on” (closely resembling hydroponics) moves and scars very readily. Using the permanent trough means I only have one scar which is able to be repaired if necessary.
As for the overgrazing issue, it seems to change with the time of year, which is a relief, early in the summer the pdks are grazed close to the gates first, on a three day graze, later in the summer the grazing moves further out into the pdks until the whole pdk is even. After the break of the season in autumn the grazing is fairly even until now in the spring flush when the stock seem to graze to soil types, which can vary from patches of gravel and clay (prefered at this time of the year because of the clover content) to deep sand ( prefered later on as that is where the perennials perform better)
The trough I use is only an 8ft as I have found that this is enough, as long as the cattle know that they will get a drink when they get to the trough they are happy to wait their turn, this goes for water flow as well. I have a trough that has far less flow than is desirable, but there is never any angst at watering time as they” know they will get a drink”. I do intend to improve the flow to this trough. It’s on the to do list .
These things keep evolving of course, so it’s good to hear other’s experiences.