Farmer Writes: no water but all the rain

The bigger group of first calvers were housed on Wednesday evening last ahead of the cold spell, and the in-calf heifers followed suit on Friday evening ahead of Storm Bert. I had housing under control, or so I thought.

That was until I went out on Sunday morning and there was no water. I hadn’t expected this given the amount of rain that fell on Friday night and Saturday.

Having no water or no pressure has become a regular occurrence over the last 12 to 18 months. It felt like it happened at least once a month if not more frequently in spring, and it only ever happened on Sunday mornings.

I found it less of an issue in summer – or at least it was easier to handle as the troughs in the paddocks have good capacity and it’s usually a short-term issue. The cows on silage can handle it a bit better, but having bulls coming close to the end of the finishing period and having no water available isn’t an option.

I went with wetter silage and expected the water to be back later that evening, but by Monday morning there was still nothing.

The first calvers were sent back out on Monday afternoon, as I didn’t want to assume it would be back flowing that evening.

They were the biggest group in the shed and served by one trough. If water was slow to come back, they were the ones likely to jostle most for it as they had been fed straw Friday.

Fortunately, water returned late on Monday afternoon but was gone again on Tuesday morning.

With the regularity that water supply drops off, I’m going to have to act now and have a backup, as I can’t rely on the mains supply anymore.

I’d factored this into the grazing side of things throughout the year and put in more drinking troughs in some places and larger ones in others.

From experience, I’ve no trust in the water utility either, so I’m going to have to look at other options. Water not being available despite heavy rain sounds ridiculous but that’s the situation we were in. It’s one I’d rather not experience again either.

There is an old pumphouse near the shed there so that is one option, but maybe some larger back-up tanks could be a better option. I’ve been considering some form of rainwater harvesting for use with the power washer, so I think this could be the final push.

When you’re trying to run an operation smoothly, incidents like this throw things out of kilter and take up unnecessary time. I’ll weigh up what suits best and go from there.