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SW Saskatchewan | I think there may be too issues here.
Canadian literature literature shows large gains for fresh clean water for cattle on pasture, my personal experience backs this up although I had always been of the "cattle will drink anything school".
In real drought when we have had to haul water and trough water cattle, we were surprised by the condition, especially of the calves, when the pastures were brown and barren of everthing but sagebrush and cactus.
Then when we bought some land with fields with creeks and running springs in different fields, the cattle off those fields always seemed to do better.
Community pastures a few years ago had disappointing results, even with good grazing conditions. The members felt it could be water problems so a number of water pumping sites were set up to pump water from dugouts to tanks. At first, the dugouts were fenced off, but once the pumps failed and cattle broke into the dugouts. When the pumps were repaired, the fence wasn't and cattle returned to drinking from tanks. Since then, whenever they have put in a pump system, we have never bothered to fence off dugouts.
OK,SW sask is a LOT dryer than Missouri, our dugouts rarely get replenished except in spring break-up and sometimes , they will go without new water coming in for three years. Makes for real concentrated water- high in sulphates especially, also high in fecal bacteria .
Without cattle tramping pond edges, fecal count drops and the findings have been that cattle will travel farther than normally thought to get good water, if you can keep one good supply, maybe you don't need one on every section but pumping allows for distribution pipelines to be added.
Also, we have what is known as blue green algae, not mossy stuff but single cell green or aquamarine stuff that will turn the water to pea soup but will strain right through your fingers. Can be very poisonous, cattle normally won't drink it but if the fences are too good and they can't get out, they will, and they will die, often in large numbers.
The old neighbour cowboys would always drink out of the water before their cattle, if they had any trouble they would drink the water , and they knew how to make cows live on nothing- but they always had good water! | |
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Will algae make the water taste bad?
