Don't waste water

By Pat Tuite, Chief Pig Adviser, Drogheda

3 July 2004: During any long period of dry weather issues of water shortage and conservation always arise. On pig farms the monitoring of water usage should be on-going. This will control both wastage and costs.

Each pig farm should have a water meter on the supply pipe. If one is buying water from a public source it is probably already metered. But the water usage is reported only twice a year, with the bill!! This provides no adequate control.

One needs to have water usage figures on a daily basis. This means reading the meters at the same time each morning.

The ideal is to have a meter on each section of the unit (i.e. finishers, second stage weaners, drysows and farrowing plus first stage weaners).

Any increase in water usage in the unit or section of the unit should lead to a witch-hunt for a leak.

A leaking half inch pipe could lose 30,000 gallons water per week. If this goes into the manure tank it could cost at least €4,500 to build storage for it.

To land-spread this one week's leak as diluted manure could cost between €100 (1 mile) and €300 (5 miles) plus VAT.

It could cost about €110 plus VAT to purchase this lost water from a local authority (@ 80c per metres cubed).

To avoid all these unnecessary costs one should install at least one water meter. A three quarter inch meter with stopcock and meter box costs about €185 + VAT. A similar one inch meter costs about €455 + VAT. This investment will have a rapid payback on any pig unit.