hauling water

Next year we are going to pasture some cows or sheep on land that doesn't have any water, so I have to haul it. I do not have a good water tank, however I have several old 1000 gal. steel gas or fuel tanks. My question is, is it possible to get the old fuel tanks clean enough to use to haul water for the livestock ?

Would you drink water from an old gas can?

Save yourself some agrivation and buy a poly water tank.

Can you get ahold of these things in your area? You can buy them all day here for about 50 bucks cleaned and ready for water.

Dave

We used some old fuel tanks for irriagtion for a few years, we could never get the odor out of the tanks. Bought a nice poly tank that mounts in the truck bed. It works great, plus it"s easy to remove from the truck bed when it"s empty.

Guess I'm with Michael. Quit drinking out of gas cans when I was a kid.

I've seen animals eat and drink from anything and then seen them get finicky and not. Hate to see your lose your herd to some weird ailment and die or have them go off feed and water because of it.

With all the lab testing being done nowadays and all these consumer groups whining about every little feed additive that isn't organic, about the time some carcinogen like MTBE from gas and diesel shows up in your meat, your farm is done.

Either way, even our government economists would say its not worth saving a $100 and lose a few hundred thousand bucks in a herd cause of some adverse reaction, death, or taint in the meat and then all the vet bills that could go with it.

The gov follows the whole food chain when something goes wrong somewhere be it salmonella poisoning or some minuute spec of insecticide put in a grain bin that then gets fed later. They all get blacklisted and quarantined. With mad cows around, they are watching the food chain very close.

My opinion on your question: Plastic tanks are very hard to clean. With steel, constant flushing with water and dawn or other dish soap or the green degreaser and then flush the soap out. Kinda hard to flush out a sealed tank and get much flushing done. I clean open round stock tanks all the time with a hose and bleach sometimes but they flush easy.

I suppose you can find 50 people on this board who has done it with no problem but they didn't used to test cattle and sheep the way they do now. If your meat get rejected down the road by some lab test, it might break you.

It is just that I have so many of them. Both my dad and grandpa were oil jobbers and I have been left with quite a collection in the 300 to 1000 gal range. I have used them for every thing I can think of. Septic tanks, lined them up for wind breaks, scafolding, dump boxes on trailers, firefighting water wagons, have sliced 2 feet of of each end and made water troughs. Throw in 1/2 bag of amonium sulfate before use wait a year and they will be so rusted that no way could hydrocarbons, heavy metals, or MTBE exist. I have cut them the long way and used them for feed bunks after the same rust treatment. If I but the poly tank the size I want, it will consume almost all of a $1000 bill. And soon after I get it I know someone will but roundup, 24D or paraquat in it, leaving me where I am now.

couple things come to mind
as was stated, would you drink water from a gas can?
Are these transport tanks or stationary fuel tanks. If they are transport tanks, then they will be baffled to make it safe to haul liquids in, if they are stationary tanks, then they will have no baffle in the tank, then you will have 8000 pounds of moving water and when you turn, start, stop, anything that water will slosh around and can upset trailer with tank on it, or truck, whatever you might have it on.
Jim

Almost every farm around here uses old fuel tanks as stock tanks, the rest use bathtubs. I don't know how they clean em, maybe acid rinse before use?

If you have so many of them, why don't you haul them off for scrap and buy a poly tank?

Just a thought.

Glad I don't eat or drink at your place. Think I'll passs on next years 87 octane beef and lamb steaks also. Gas is a manmade carcinogen. Not intended for consumption nor food and water containers. No it is not a good idea nor an effective way to save money.