They may not yet be demanding bottled water, but cattle do have some clear preferences when it comes to quenching their thirst.
Giving them what they want can put extra dollars in ranchers’ pockets.
“The more cattle drink, the more they eat and the more they gain,” says Walter Willms, a range management scientist at Agriculture Canada’s Lethbridge research centre.
With that in mind, Willms is conducting a research project to help ranchers who must rely on dugouts to provide their cattle with the tastiest water possible.
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“We know cattle respond to clean water by drinking more and gaining more,” Willms said in an interview. “The question then is how can the rancher provide clean water to the cattle?”
In the research project, water was pumped from specific areas of a dugout to a series of watering troughs to which the cattle had equal access.
The water was pumped from three sites in the dugout: on the edge of the dugout 60 centimetres below the surface, in the centre 10 cm below the surface, and in the centre 90 cm from the bottom.
The drinking habits of four animals were monitored during three five-day periods over the course of the summer.
During the first period, in mid-July, the cattle consumed 160 litres from the edge, 75 L from the centre-top and 25 L from the centre-bottom.
In the last test period at the end of August, the centre-top became the preferred location at 105 L, followed by the edge at 75 L and the centre-bottom at 35 L.
“The bottom line is that not all is created equal as far as the cattle are concerned,” Willms said, adding that the clearest message is that cattle don’t like water from the bottom of a dugout.
“That wasn’t a surprise,” he said, since water from the surface is known to be better circulated, more aerated and purer.
More puzzling was the fact that the cattle’s preference shifted over the course of the summer from the edge to the centre-top location.
Willms said there is no obvious explanation as to why the cattle switched, although it could be due to changes in temperature, aeration or microorganisms. He hopes that will become clear as the research project continues at a variety of sites and conditions over the next few years.
Ironically, the research project was prompted at least in part by Willms’ desire to debunk the notion that water intake had a significant impact on productivity.
That study found that cattle receiving higher quality fresh water had an average 23 percent advantage in rate of gain over cattle watered from a dugout.
Cattle have a great sensitivity to contaminants in the water. For example, they will avoid consuming water containing concentrations of manure as small as one part per 20,000.
“That’s very small,” said Willms. “You and I probably wouldn’t even detect that. We’d just go ahead and drink it.”
He said the short-term goal of the project will be to provide producers with advice as to how to obtain the best quality water for their cattle, and thereby take advantage of the resulting productivity increase.
The broader objective is to find ways to encourage animals to remain completely out of the dugout. Ranchers are reluctant to fence off their dugouts in case the water delivery systems fail. Devising a system that provides more palatable water at off-site troughs is the next best solution.
