[mrs tweedy]

Hi there everyone,  I'm new to the forum but have been keeping chickens, ducks, geese, pigs for about 11 years now and love it, especially since I finished 'working for a living' and escaped from the rat race 18 months ago!  Can anyone help with advice on keeping my pig's water clear.  I have a self-filling water container for them which continually tops up with fresh water but it has gone very green and looks unappetising - and will it do them any harm to drink this water. Thought about putting some barley straw in it???   thanks.

[Fowgill Farm]

Hi Mrs Tweedy
This happens to our water too and the only way we have found is to tip out scrub with a brush to remove the green, rinse and re-fill. so i would be interested to hear of any remedies for this too.
Mandy 

[Sylvia]

I don't suppose it would hurt the pigs but I, too, scrub out every other day.

[supplies for smallholders]

Hi,

Out of interest are these large drinkers?

Any body of standing water will tend to stagnate and go green in this warm weather, if using self-fill drinkers for pigs, keep size to a minimum, we use 2 1/2 and 3 Litre self fill drinkers, so the water does not hang round long enough to go stagnant.

As to "can they drink it?" - ask yourself the question, would you drink it?

Thanks

[Tiva Diva]

"As to "can they drink it?" - ask yourself the question, would you drink it?"
No, but I wouldn't drink my own bathwater after I'd got very mudddy and sat in it - which my pigs seem to love doing! And yes, they do have wallows too!
I scrub out our pigs drinking troughs 2 or 3 times a week in the summer. I think you can get a (?silver) object you can put in animals' drinking troughs to prevent algae growing - but I'd be worried my pigs would eat it. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Anyone tried one?

[HappyHippy]

I can't help as to keeping them clean 
But I use nipple drinkers (even outside) to do away with the problem 
They cost less than £10 and are steel, so no worries about getting them destroyed and you can get connections for alkathene pipe to hook them up easily.
Here's who I get them from http://www.quality-equipment.co.uk/
HTH
Karen x

[robert waddell]

tiva diva   you get alumina (liquid and solid)  to put in ponds and settling ponds(so the sediment drops to the bottom) i dont know about drinking it after treatment but you can discharge to a water course 

[Tiva Diva]

Robert,
the thing I was talking about is a silver disc you put in the trough. It's marketed as "fresha tank". I've googled some horse forums and most people seem pretty unimpressed with it (though to be fair it's marketed as an antibacterial not anti-algal).
The alumina is used in mains water treatment but you have to get the concentration right: what was that town that was poisoned by excess alumina a few years ago?
I suspect it would be more work than just scrubbing out the troughs!
Happy Hippy: I agree nipple drinkers would be ideal - but we'd need piped water to all our pens. Maybe one day.......(sigh)

[HappyHippy]

I'm just running it on the surface this year (will disconnect & drain the system in the winter) and hopefully by next winter we'll have it all dug down in. That's the plan anyway.
Karen 

[supplies for smallholders]

Hi Karen,

A word of caution.... even if you dig the pipe into the ground a couple of feet to avoid the frost, the pipe to the nipple drinkers and the nipples themselves will still freeze solid and potentially rupture the drinker / above ground pipe - so with this type of drinker I would still advise you to drain down.

Did I mention that we are now selling Freeze - free outside taps and Farmyard Hydrants??

Thanks

[robert waddell]

you can also lag the pipes with armaflex

[supplies for smallholders]

you can also lag the pipes with armaflex

You can, but even that won't have any effect in the prolonged -12 winters we have recently seen!

[HappyHippy]

See, I'm terribly soft and like to bring the pigs in for a bit in the winter 
Even in the shed, with pipes wrapped in foam insulation they still froze  the tape keeps the water in the pipe from freezing (theoretically) and I'm hoping by wrapping the pipe right up to the drinker it'll only take a blow torch and a matter of a minute or so to get them running again if they do freeze.
It's been so cold the last couple of years that even during the day the water/drinkers freeze outside 
I watched in wonder last year as the Kunes munched mouthfulls of snow, preferring it to the lukewarm water I'd lugged out to the field for them 
Pigs eh ?! Don't you just wish they could read the books and the forums too 

[zackyb]

Im still at the stage where I hose pipe water three times a day or as and when needed. But when get more pigs will be time consuming but that will be next year now.

I use big old tatty belfast sinks with cement in the plug hole and I jet hose out daily to clear the mud and fill up. Little pigs have trugs that get laid in and on and wiggled on and drank from!

All have wallows too.

Thanks for the tip for the nipple drinkers - are they okay for really big pigs as well then?

[Barrett]

Hi, like the other comments it is just down to good old fashioned elbow greese, my weaners pen goes like that so I don't fill there water up so much I have 11 weaners at the momment and 2 18lt containers so I only fill 1 and just keep and eye on it they do have a watering whole in the pen so they sometimes drink from that well the boys do the girls are slightly more refined.