Last year, a reader asked how exactly he could prevent his cattle soiling drinking troughs inside his slatted shed. Dirty water greatly depresses cattles appetite and intake. To be honest, I didn’t have an answer that did not involve spending a significant amount of money. He could replace all his troughs with new easy-clean tip-over troughs or use troughs with special protective covers. However, he did not want to go to this expensive so I decided to ask our readers what they do to prevent this common problem. Here are the three main ideas that came back:

1. Protection guard

James Byrne from Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, designed a steel protection guard that keeps the cattle’s hindquarters away from the trough. His local fabricator manufactured it and he had it galvanised later. James said it was fabricated with 40mm steel pipe, with pipe flanges for fixing to the wall. It is about 500mm wide and 500mm off the wall. Since these were fitted, the problem has been eliminated, according to James.

2. Concrete kerb

Brian Holland from Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny, solved the problem on his farm by laying two 6in blocks together approximately 5in from the troughs. Brian says when an animal reverses towards the trough, the blocks stop it from dirtying the water because it can’t reach the trough. He says he never has a problem with dirty water since laying the blocks.

3. Concrete step

Fearghal McCann, Co Armagh, said a good solution to stop cows dirtying in the drinkers is to make a 6in-high step with concrete about 2ft by 4ft placed under the drinker. The animals will not back up on the step, and when they want to drink they will step up frontwards. In the case of very big drinkers, use a bigger size of step. Brian says he uses this system on his own farm, and it works very well.

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