Water freezing

[pepino305]

Any advise on what to set up so my water will not freeze, for pigs? I have a nipple that works perfect, but the current freeze has frozen the nipple. Any ideas besides the manual way of pulling out water in rubber "dishes"? If I have to resort to puttting out water every day, would puttting water in the am and pm be enough. As you know they get it dirty and it is a pain. Thanks in advance

 

[PattySh]

I have a pig nipple on a 55 gal barrel setup. In the winter I use a 250 watt drop in ceramic heater. Works great only drawback is that you can only fill barrel a bit less than 1/2 full. Got mine from Jeffers.

 

[pepino305]

is it a trojan nipple? I can set up a barrel and drop a de-icer, but I am concerned that hogs would bust the nipple from the barrel

 

[PattySh]

Not sure the brand name but the feed store sold piglet size and the larger hog size which we bought. It is attached to the barrel quite firmly with parts purchased in the plumbing dept. pig nipple, 3/4" reducer to 1 1/2 pipe and rubber washers and plastic coupler on each side of barrel etc. Have three nipples for growing pigs on one barrel and one on another. Same nipple has been used for 2 years with sow and a boar at times and still functioning fine. They do turn it from time to time and we have to rotate it with a wrench but not often. Our barrel is fastened to the corner of a horse stall (or fence outside in summer) with a chain. Our nipples are up about 6 inches from the bottom so bedding doesn't interfere. It's our second year on the ceramic heater. The second barrel I reserved the heating element f rom a large muck bucket type heated bucket that the horses broke and we installed it in the barrel. It isn't working as well for some reason, the top of the water is freezing this week, need to have hubby check it out.

 

[beerman]

I bought my piggy a nice $50 heated water bucket. 30 min later a $50 chewed up pig toy

 

[PattySh]

Been there, done that! I tried a heated water bucket for my boar last yr, bad idea. I first saw the barrel/nipple setup while on one of my grandson's field trips. Thought it was awesome and I searched for the lowest possible wattage ceramic drop in heater for winter. 250 watts did the trick vs the usual 1500W ones! Our water barrel plug was loose on the second one that's why it was freezing up. Our first 3 piglets 20+ yrs ago ate thru the bottom of their nice new big rubber pan the first day! Pigs are definately a learn as you go project lol. Luckily none of our current piggies chew on their rubber pans at all.

Edited to add: We actually kept the barrel setup outside last winter and it worked until spring and they made a muddy mess around the bottom and tipped it. We moved it and reinforced the chain holding it to the fence and it was fine. Ideally a nice little concrete pad would be wonderful!

 

[sixofus09]

free small fish pond, 30 dollar deicer 1500 watts. so far so good.

 

[Cornish Heritage]

When we lived in Montana where it is in the minuses for quite a few weeks (sometimes months) in the winter we just gave the pigs fresh water morning & night. We did have outside faucets which we heat taped and did try putting heating elements in the rubber bowls but most times the pigs would pull them out!

Animals soon learn to drink what they need when it is available and a bit of dirt in the water will not hurt them.

Liz

 

[drdoolittle]

I do what Cornish Heritage did----give them fresh water once in the a.m. and once in the p.m. That's why I HATE winter so much! We haul one 5-gal. jug and 10 1-gal. milk jugs of water in the p.m. for all the animals. If it's not too far below freezing, I only havbe to take about 4 1-gal milk jugs of water out in the a.m.----I just break the ice, scoop out as many of the pieces of ice out of the water as I can, and then add the water I brought out. I've done this for a few years. I do have one heated bucket for the goats and chickens.