Winter water: fix it in September, not at 5 a.m. in January

Water is the nutrient cattle need most and the one that gets the least planning. A dry cow needs 8 to 12 gallons a day in winter, more if she is lactating or eating dry hay, and intake drops sharply when the water is near freezing or covered in ice. Reduced water means reduced feed intake, which means lost condition, which shows up in April as a late calf or an open cow.

The time to fix water is now, while the ground is soft and the parts store is open.

The options

Stock tank with a heater. The simplest and the most expensive to run. A 1,500-watt submersible or floating heater keeps a 100-gallon tank open to about -20°F and costs roughly $1 to $3 a day in electricity depending on the weather and rate. Failure points: a chewed cord, a heater that quits on the coldest night, and a tank that is too big for the heater. Insulate the tank (foam board on the outside, a partial cover on top) and you cut the electric bill in half.

Energy-free waterers. Insulated units where the water sits below frost line and cattle push a ball or lid to drink. They work well if enough cattle are drinking, roughly 20 head or more per unit, because the cattle's use is what keeps water moving. With five cows on one, the ball freezes. Site them on a well-drained pad; the number one failure is a float valve that freezes because the pit filled with water.

Electric-heated automatic waterers. The standard on most operations: a thermostat-controlled heating element in an insulated bowl. Reliable and cheap to run. Failure points: the heating element, the thermostat, and the ground rod. Stray voltage from a bad ground is the silent one; cattle get a tingle when they drink, back off, and you cannot figure out why they are not drinking. Test with a voltmeter from the water surface to the ground every fall.

Geothermal or "frost-free" tubes. A tank fed by a deep vertical culvert that draws ground heat. No electricity, quiet, and surprisingly effective in the northern Plains where they were developed. They need to be built right: depth matters, and so does keeping the tank small.

Pond, creek, or spring. Free until it is not. If cattle are chopping ice, they are drinking less than they need, and someone is walking out with an axe every morning. A gravity-fed tank below a pond with a frost-free line is the fix, and it is a September job.

The September checklist

1. Run every heater and waterer now. Plug in the tank heaters and see which ones work. Turn on the automatic waterers and check that the element warms.
2. Check every cord and every outlet. GFCI outlets at every tank. Cords in conduit or buried; cattle and rodents eat them.
3. Test for stray voltage. Voltmeter, water to ground, at every electric waterer.
4. Fix the drainage. Water standing around a waterer becomes an ice rink and a mud hole, and it fills the pit.
5. Bury shallow lines or plan to drain them. A line at 18 inches will freeze in most of the Corn Belt; 48 inches will not.
6. Buy the spare parts now. A spare heater, a spare float valve, a spare element for each type of waterer you own. The one that fails will fail at midnight on a holiday.
7. Think about the far pastures. If you are stockpiling grass or grazing stalks, where will those cattle drink in January? A tank on a trailer with a heater and a generator is a real answer for some people.

Cattle that drink well in winter eat well in winter, and that is most of what keeping them in condition amounts to.