LONG day getting ready for COLD nights!!

JD Seller

Well-known Member
I started out Wednesday on getting all the livestock equipment ready for a hard cold spell. One of the most important is keeping fresh water to the cattle. At 3PM today I finished checking out 53 automatic waterers. That is on four different places. I cleaned them out. Did any adjustments to the float valves and such. Checked/installed the heaters. Put in light bulbs in the waterer bases for heat. Had 10-11 heaters that where bad. 15-20 float valves that slow leaked or flowed slow. The two biggest Pains had electrical issues. The worst one I had to pull 75 feet of new wire from the barn to the waterer. Sure glad it was one I had installed with conduit. The older electric runs are just buried wire. Had two of them bad last year and had to saw/jack hammer concrete to then lay a new wire.

Just got back in the house after a quick check of them. With the 40 watt bulb in the base you can see the waterer kind of glow when it is dark. All where on and nice clean water in them. Hopefully that same way in the morning. Supposed to get down to 13 degrees tonight with 20-25 MPH winds. That will test them out a little bit. LOL

Don't want to look at the electric meter. LOL Still much easier than times gone by. When K-1 and propane heaters took a lot more time. I can remember my Grand Father made a cattle water tank that you built a fire with coke under the tank. You had to remove ashes and add fuel twice each day. Plus fill it with water.
 
JD I don’t envy you. I didn’t have near that many waterers to get ready for winter but I didn’t enjoy getting access lids open that were held on with rusted bolts. Then the hogs were chewing on my coveralls while I was on my hands and knees working with the waterer. The cattle drinks weren’t so bad usually. The Smokey old tank heaters we used when I was a kid were daily maintenance but easy to use. There was nothing to fix unless one sprang a leak.
 
Did some of the same as well as bedded up the cows good. I have a fall calving herd and have been having to many sick calves lately. Maybe this cold snap will help and allow us to get the last few wet spots harvested. Tom
 
Im getting ready to install a frost free cattle waterer with the ball closures. Found one store with a mirafount and another store with a ritchie. Both about the same price. Which do you prefer?
 
I personally swear by Ritchie. We had one that was older than me till dad hit it with the rear blade hauling a round bale to the feeder. I replaced it with a stainless model.
 
A little tip on frost proofing the automatic fountains. Remove to crappy styrofoam insulation and install 1 inch armourflex rubber insulation.
 
Ray Tractor I do not like the ball closure type waterers. Yes they are cheaper on energy requirements but they just seemed to cause trouble here. Usually the ball freezing shut or getting so much ice on it that it would not seal and then the waterer would freeze. Then having to "train" new cattle/calves to them. I will gladly pay more on my electric bill to have fewer head aches. Also the ground tubes are not easy to install in an existing waterer location.

The majority of my waterers are Ritchie Watermatic 300s. I have replaced just about all the waterers in the last 10 years. The other brands and types just are not as simple as these. I have not replaced a single one of these waters in that time frame. I go outside of how Ritchie says to mount them. I put a 110V receptacle under the waterer. I then use a submersible heater in the waterer. I drop the cord down to the receptacle. In the other side of the receptacle I use the old style plug in light bulb socket. I put a 40 watt bulb in it. The submersible heater keeps the top from freezing and the light bulb keeps the valve an lines from freezing. The electric cost are less than $10 a waterer a month in the coldest weather.
 
Thank you for valuable info. We are much milder here in southern Indiana, which is why I was hoping to use the ball kind and not even run electric. So I will have some things to think about.
 
And here I was going to complain about running new wire to one waterer, about a foot from the barn and fifteen feet total. Now, all I have to complain about is the darned maintenance man not getting around to replacing it when the temperature was anywhere above where it is now. What a lazy bum.

I have a Behlen- it uses a mat heater on the bottom side of the plastic basins. Only had the valve area freeze up one time, in some super cold temps. I installed the tube into the ground when I installed this, but I'm not sure it helps, since the water table is only about ten inches down right there. I think I'll try installing a receptacle in the base, and maybe use a light bulb as well, that does sound like great insurance

The electric line runs inside the wall of our feeding room and through the foundation of the barn under ground to the fountain. I really hope I can fish a new wire through, it was a tough job originally, and that was in much nicer weather.
 
Ray Tractor: If your going to install one without electric then you going to need several things.
1) Well drain location for the waterer. Water logged soil will not insulate it well enough.
2) Make your ground tube as big as possible and go at least 4 foot deep in Southern IN. The deeper the better.
3) Make sure it is sealed really well to the base/pad. Any air leaks and your going to have trouble.
4) They work best if you have it sized to your herd. Meaning that in real cold weather the inflow of water helps keep it from freezing. So if you have too large of waterer for your herd size you can have more trouble.
5) Set it up to were you can easily drain it. If you do not have any cattle on it in real cold weather than shut the water off and drain it.

I had Mira Fountains in the 1980s-90s. I grew to hate the things. They would cause trouble at the worse times. Then if you drank the Mira Fountain Kool-Aid and did not have electric around, thawing them out in sub-zero weather sucked. Hearing cattle bawling for water was too common a happening for me. Tore them all out an replaced them with heated waterers and slept better at night.
 
4520bw: I have found that to be true too. The seal is important.

I have found that I pour a new concrete pad under them when installing them. That pad might only be a few inches thick but I push the "new" waterer into the concrete about a 1/2 an inch. Let it the concrete dry. Remove the water and use a good rubber seal when tightening the waterer to the pad.
 
I've read in my ancestor's journals from the 1930s how in late winter they would melt snow for the cattle to drink. When the sloughs and wells ran out late in winter there was only snow. I can't imagine the work involved in filling that tank with snow and then tending a wood fire long enough to get enough water for even a small herd of cattle. We have it easy today.
 
Cold weather is the best time to have dairy cows in a tie stall barn, cozy and warm, and no frozen water. We have a Richie water bowl outside for a few heifers, and they work well. In our calf barn, when temperatures drop to 0F the warmer will freeze, so few years back , we broke the floor in the barn, dug 4 ? deep trenches, and buried the water lines to heated water bowls in each pen. Only mistake I made was I didn?t put in Ritchie bowls, I put in a different brand local dealer was selling MSI , I think they are, I wouldn?t recommend they. I have to run a light bulb in them in cold weather, heater element just won?t cut it. And these are inside the barn. Never again.
 
I'll second the Richie waterers. We have one that was put in in the late 70's still in use at this time. Not bad for a waterer. Most tanks don't last that long.
 
Ritchie waterers are great. We have one for the two horses and the mule. Buried water line and electric to it and just flip the switch on the pole and it is on. Will stay on all winter. Works great. And we are down to 9 this morning... was supposed to be "only" 12 in NC Iowa. But I can tell it's working before going out to do chores. Used to have two "solar" waterers that really worked pretty good. I would not have wanted to use them for cattle. They had one side covered with lexan, painted black inside with a reservoir connected to about a 5 gallon cylinder where the horses/mule would drink that had a plastic float on it. It would have 1 maybe 2 inches of ice under that float in subzero (-10 or colder). But a gallon of hot tap water poured over the float would free things up and then used an ice fishing ice scoop to break up/clean it out of ice. They would stay open all day even subzero. BUT... I do NOT miss them. They worked good where we did not have electric. But we took care of that. Besides, nice to support an Iowa company like Ritchie!
 
I always installed the bolts in the anchor brackets, then welded rod from bolt head to bolt head...set that in the fresh concrete....made a much better anchoring system than free-hand setting the bolts.
 

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