Purdue University Extension is providing tips to help make daily animal watering easier during below-freezing temperatures; as while animals water intake goes down during cold weather, access to free-flowing water is still important to their health.
A few steps to make things less of a hassle include:
- Insulating your troughs:
- Keep water sources off the cold ground as it causes them to lose heat quickly. Some straw, dirty bedding, etc. underneath or around the water trough will help.
- For large troughs, consider covering part of it with styrofoam or plywood; which can be simply attached with clamps.
- The two-troughs technique is also an option. Place a smaller trough inside a larger one, then place insulating material, like straw or foam insulation, in between the layers.
- Move water to a sunny location, as it can help warm metal and black plastics to keep water from freezing longer.
- Moving water doesn’t freeze as easily, and can be taken advantage of with floats. Animals will move around floats to get to the water, keeping it from remaining stagnate. For smaller troughs, a basketball or soccer ball will work.
- When it comes to caring for chickens, they require fairly little water, so hauling out warm water should do just fine.
- Ducks and Geese might be animals that should NOT have access to free water when temperatures are below freezing since they use it more for bathing than drinking.
- No matter how small the opening, ducks may thrash against it to create a puddle to bathe in. This might cause them to become frozen to the ground and injure themselves.
- Ducks and Geese will eat fresh snow, so leaving access to fresh, unpacked snow is an adequate water source.
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