Portable Water Tank Helps Improve Pasture Management

Portable Water Tank Helps Improve Pasture Management FARM HOME Miscellaneous Emry Birdwell and his wife Deborah run stocker cattle on their ranch near Henrietta Texas They practice intensive grazing moving cattle several times a day allowing each pasture to fully recover before grazing it again In the past 9 years they have increased the stocking capacity on their ranch from 2 400 head to more than double that number “On our ranch today we have 120 permanent paddocks fenced with electric hard wire and we divide each of those 3 to 5 ways with poly wire During March through June we moved cattle an average of 4 times per day – the maximum is 6 times per day and the minimum twice a day ” says Birdwell “Since 2011 we’ve been putting in a pipeline system for water We’d been watering out of dirt ponds that collect runoff from rainwater Due to lack of rain in the current drought we put in the pipeline so we can pump from those dirt tanks into water troughs Most of the cattle are now using water troughs ” he says This last spring he came up with the idea of manning a mobile water trough pump and generator on a trailer that can be moved from one water hole to another “This enables us to pump from a water source we couldn’t use into a trough and make it usable We’re watering 3 800 cattle right now out of one 24-ft trough ” he says They move the mobile trough to wherever they want the cattle to be “The portable trough is just a big propane tank cut in half; it’s 24 ft long and about 5 ft wide and holds about 1 500 gal ” says Birdwell The trough mounts on dual wheels After coming up with the idea he had a friend build it for him and it’s undergone a few modifications “The trough waters about 30 cattle at a time ” he says The pipeline has a good flow and can keep up with a thirsty herd “We use this trough two different ways We use it on a pressurized line and we can pump directly out of any water source When we have it hooked up to the pressurized line we have three floats on it so we can get maximum water flow into it We also have a water pump and generator sitting on the trailer so we can pull it up to a fenced-off pond to pump water out “We can pull the trough trailer with an ATV It’s well balanced and we can pull it with about anything when it’s empty ” He also put 5 jacks on it so he can level the trough anywhere they put it no matter what the terrain is like “Eventually we hope to have all our pipelines in place so we can just hook up to a pressurized line wherever it is but for right now we can use it these two different ways ” he says

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