The Definitive Water Trough

 

Water troughs can be a real pain on a stud. And although I have no experience on a cattle farm too.

You plumb one in and rest assured on the wettest and coldest day in the winter something will fail. In the pitch dark you will be trying to avoid pouring a large number of litres of water from creating a quagmire.

From many years experience of fixing the damn things, I like to think that I've come up with a better way of doing things. I probably haven't, as there will always be better methods and I suspect others have gone down the same route as I have.

So what do I do that is different?


One thing is obvious from the picture and that is that there is no back rail, so that the trough can be tipped backwards to both empty it and remove it from its cradle.

You will also notice that instead of hard-plumbing the trough into the cradle it's connected to the water through standard Hozelock components. This means that the trough can be quickly disconnected and removed.

This arrangement also has other advantages.

1. Water is often needed in the paddocks on a stud. Just unclip the connector and fill a bucket.

2. You can also use these connectors to join a hose to the trough, so that this can be used to perhaps fill an adjacent broken trough or supply water to trees.

But the whole point of this arrangement is to avoid using tools in a field on a cold and wet day.