[faith0504]

the oil does work thanks doganjo, tried it in the hens water and the horses, i try to keep the horses water ice free as much as possible as my big mare dunks her hay, and to much ice can cause colic, so i have been told

matt i just put a splosh in my horses buckets they all have the large rubber water buckets also, i suppose its trail and error,

[Fergie]

Because of a thing which used to be called the latent heat of fusion it takes a lot of energy to convert water at 0deg into ice at 0deg.  So when you break the ice in the water trough also remove it to keep the water clearer for longer

Issue 2753 of New Scientist dated 25th March 2010 had an article on the freezing of hot vs cold water, part of which says:

"HOT water sometimes freezes faster than cold water - but why? This peculiar phenomenon has baffled scientists for generations, but now there is evidence that the effect may depend on random impurities in the water.

Fast-freezing of hot water is known as the Mpemba effect, after a Tanzanian schoolboy called Erasto Mpemba (see "How the Mpemba effect got its name"). Physicists have come up with several possible explanations, including faster evaporation reducing the volume of hot water, a layer of frost insulating the cooler water, and differing concentration of solutes. But the answer has been very hard to pin down because the effect is unreliable - cold water is just as likely to freeze faster."

Thanks Waterhouse,

your memory is better than mine - I remember reading the article, but since New Scientist is a weekly magazine, it's very difficult to remember exactly when or what was reported.
However, its still a mystery!

John