The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Land Management => Topic started by: cambee on August 01, 2017, 09:26:31 am
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Hi all hope you can help someone with an unpractical mind. We keep our sheep in a paddock with a natural stream and shallow small pond that they drink out of. We were advised by our vet that to avoid fluke it is best not to have the sheep drinking from the ground as they make it muddy, snails etc. It would be fine to use the stream water though diverted into a trough or drinker. So, has anybody used a stream to divert water into a drinker and how? The stream runs down a slope through a 4ftx4ft shallow pond. The only way that I could think of would be to dig a trough into the ground but this would defeat the object and they may as well drink from the stream? Thank you.
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Unless you can fence them out of the stream I suspect you are wasting your time. I have seen water diverted with a piece of pipe into a trough to make a bigger drinking area for pigs but the water flowed out when it was full, back into the cut.
Are they making a mess around the pond? They could also of course make a mess around a trough.
They will prefer fresh water to stagnant.
You could pipe water into a trough with a ball cock but it all seems a lot of trouble to me.
Then there is frost on your pipes to consider etc.
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Build a dam around the pond, with an overflow/outfall? The sheep then have to reach over the dam wall to drink, and are not muddying it with their feet.
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I would agree with harmony's comment of fencing
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Fence off all the water , at one point in the stream preferably a rocky bit run the fence in and out of the stream to allow sheep to drink OR plastic pipe laid in stream at top of field with end filter , plastic trough lower down field , pipe in then second pipe out little higher than in pipe straight back to stream
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..depends how many sheep.. a trough and dip a bucket in the stream to fill it or cart a cheap pump (pond pump) you can run off car battery +/- inverter when the trough needs filling is the lowest tech.
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Is the stream a foot or two above where the trough will go? If so, it shouldn't be too difficult to put a pipe in the stream so that water flows down to the trough under gravity. Then you could either let it overflow constantly back into the stream, or you could install an overflow pipe at a lower level than the inlet, and let that constantly overflow back to the stream.
So it should be easy enough to do. I agree with the others that it might not be *worth* doing though, unless you also fence off the muddy bits.
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http://www.electricfence-online.co.uk/shop/electric-fencing/electric-fencing-accessories/30m-solar-water-pump-kit-1133966.html (http://www.electricfence-online.co.uk/shop/electric-fencing/electric-fencing-accessories/30m-solar-water-pump-kit-1133966.html)
A bucket on a string will be much cheaper tho ;D