Mmmmmm.......Cool, clean, water. How do you manage your horses' water? I personally don't have an automatic waterer. As much as I would love one, I just haven't manged to install one, so instead this is what I do. I clean my troughs at least once a week, and when I do that I use bleach. I scrub with a stiff scrub brush and a few cups of bleach mixed with some water and rinse well. Once I've done that and rinsed, as I refill the trough, I add about 3/4 cup bleach to 100 gallons of water. It really makes it no different than chlorinated city water. 1/2 cup bleach to my 75 gallon trough. I do this because I have well water and this helps to retard the growth of algae which is not good for your horses. Now, I've never had a horse refuse the water and it seems to help allot. Now another thing that I've noticed in doing this, is that when I do have a muddy area in the paddock where in the spring and fall the horses are more often, I've not had hoof thrush. I think that's because this where I clean the troughs and the bleach run off there just might be enough to help with that. No proof of that, though, just my own belief. This process works well for me and the horses here have fresh water in which they'll drink. I also keep my troughs up on cement blocks and this is because Misty has the tendency to climb in and splash. I keep a 35 gallon small rubber trough on the ground for her "puddling pool". So let me know what you do and if there's anything that you've found works well for you.
4 comments:
Im a lazy waterer....but my horse doesnt care.
I keep 2 water tanks for him that I wash about 2X a month. More if they need it, it just depends on how dirty they get.
Scooter would rather drink from the pond or the little creek that runs at the back of our 30 acres anyhow~
I try to scrub mine out once a week but probably get them done more like twice a month. I do use a little bleach to clean them but not as much as you. I learned when living at Ronald McDonald House that a little bleach goes a long way and have scaled down the amounts I use since then. I don't put bleach in the water for the horses to drink. I was never impressed with the thinking that created chlorinated public water in the first place.
After reading about how clean everyone's water trough is, I feel guilty to say that the troughs at the barn do not get cleaned nearly that often. With all the rain we've had this summer, the horses are probably drinking rainwater rather than water from the faucet. We've put goldfish in many of the big troughs in an attempt to keep mosquitos down.
Wow, goldfish! I've never heard of that. If I did that I'd have a trough of dead fish.
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