LANIGAN, Sask. – It seems unlikely you’ll be seeing cows doing promotional ads for bottled water any time soon.
Given the choice between high quality, purified water and stinky well water, a lot of cattle apparently prefer the latter. That was the rather surprising finding in the first year of a water preference study at the Western Beef Development Centre’s Termuende research farm.
“We found there was no taste sensitivity to the purified water,” said Bart Lardner, technology transfer co-ordinator for the beef development centre. “They just didn’t drink as much of it.”
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The cattle in the first trial in the study were able to choose water from four sources: aerated water, groundwater from a 120-metre-deep well, direct access to a dugout and coagulated and ozonated surface water. The latter would be most palatable to humans.
A report describing the research project notes that “it was expected that high quality treated water would be preferred over lower quality water types.”
But the cattle in the study confounded those expectations by drinking roughly 3,500 litres of well water, 2,500 L of aerated water, 2,000 L of direct entry water and just 1,500 L of the high quality ozonated water.
“Results from both water consumption and time spent drinking support this preference choice,” said the report outlining the 2003 results.
Well water was not included in the second trial, in which there was little difference in consumption of ozonated-coagulated water, unaerated surface water, ozonated-chlorinated water and direct entry water.
Lardner said there two possible reasons for the cattle’s preference for well water.
First, the cattle’s history was such that they had probably been consuming mainly well water before the study started, so that’s the taste they were used to.
Second, the sulfates (roughly 1,400 parts per million, well below risk levels), dissolved solids and low level salts in the well water may have been more palatable than the essentially odourless and tasteless purified water.
This year, the cattle in the study will spend three weeks on local town water so they won’t be predisposed to prefer any of the water types offered in the trial.
Among the issues researchers will be analyzing in the last two years of the three-year study are at what point consumption of marginal ground water will fall below that of surface water, and the health effects of drinking marginal ground water with high levels of sulfates for extended periods.
The 20-day trials involve three paddocks, each holding four animals and four watering troughs, which are randomly rearranged every five days.
The various types of water are pumped to the troughs and the selection of each water type is monitored through the use of video cameras. Each trough is measured daily for consumption.
The water preference study is linked to another evaluating the effects of water quality on weight gain.
That study, now in its sixth and final year, has shown that yearling weight gain is directly correlated to water quality. The more cattle drink, the more they will eat, thereby increasing their rate of gain.
On average, yearlings drinking aerated water pumped to a trough gained 0.2 pounds per day more than those drinking directly from a dugout. Cattle consuming high quality coagulated and chlorinated water gained 0.17 lb. more per day than those on dugout water.
Lardner said the researchers at the centre will be trying to figure out how the apparent preference of some cattle for well water ties in to the notion that providing higher quality water will boost rate of gain.
“If a producer is going to set up a watering system and put out all that expense, we want to find out if in fact the cattle will drink that kind of water,” he said.
