Grundy County
Thirsty Cattle?
by the late John H. Ferguson, Ag Engineering Specialist
Archived article
About six months ago I wrote an article about getting through the winter with short water supplies. I did not expect the problem to persist as long as it has. Many areas of northern Missouri have not had significant runoff since last July. Many ponds are nearly dry, and the remaining water is stale and of poor quality.
A lot of us in the business of grazing livestock are looking for alternative water sources. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers for many producers. This is a case where long-term solutions may be more obvious than immediate ones. Building a new pond or renovating an old one may help next year, but will not get your cows through the summer. The same may apply to drilling a well or developing a spring. These jobs are dependent on the availability of a contractor who can do the work.
Available options will vary from one farm to the next. Reduction of stock numbers is one option. If you are in a backgrounding operation, this may be the most obvious solution. But if you have spent the last several years building a cow herd through selection, liquidation is a serious setback. Even in this situation, it is probably a good time to consider some very hard culling.
If you have rural water available, this is probably the easiest solution. While watering cattle from the pipeline may result in some very high monthly bills, as a short term solution it is probably cheaper and more dependable than any other choice. You may need some additional pipeline and tanks to put the water where it is needed, but these can be installed on a temporary basis without a lot of additional cost.
Across much of the area, old wells are a questionable source. Most of our wells will not provide a very high delivery rate. They may have worked fine when Grandpa was watering a few calves with the hand pump, but they tend to play out as soon as you drop in an electric pump. If you have an existing well with a low flow, you may be able to make some use of it by increasing the storage capacity. This can be done with an oversized stock tank, or with a separate tank that functions as a water tower to gravity feed to another tank. The pump can then be put on a timed cycle to run for a short period, then stop to let the well recover. It will take some trial and error work to determine the length of this cycle and the amount of water that can actually be delivered each day.
It may be possible to use a solar-powered pump for this purpose. In general, solar pumps do not have a very high delivery rate, and will need a reservoir for storage. They are costly to purchase, but installation and operating costs are very low. If you have several wells in scattered locations, solar pumps can easily be moved from one to another.
If there are ponds or structures on nearby farms that have an adequate water supply, pumping into a dry pond may be an option. Irrigation pumps and pipelines can move considerable water in a short time, but are costly to operate. Another drawback is that the water is still subject to loss from evaporation and seepage in its new location. In some counties there is a USDA emergency program in effect that can provide cost-sharing assistance for this type of pumping. Contact your local FSA office for more information on this program.
A final option is to rent additional ground with adequate water and forage sources. This may be easier said than done, considering how widespread the problem is. However in some counties, land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program has been released for grazing. There are restrictions on the stocking rate, and the amount of the contract acres that can be grazed. Therefore some fencing will be required. There is a 35% reduction in payment for the grazed acres. Your local FSA office can provide details on this program as well. If you happen to adjoin CRP land with a good water source, this may be the best alternative available in a bad situation.
It is hard to spend money on emergency measures, knowing that one heavy rain will remedy the problem. I hope that by the time you read this, we will have received that rain. But if your water supply is dwindling and you need assistance in evaluating your alternatives, please contact County Extension Center.
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University of Missouri
Extension Grundy County grundyco@missouri.edu Updated 11/01/2006 Vickie Pash |
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