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Pied Piper to Water

Make sure cattle know where the water is.

Water is the most crucial nutrient for livestock. They can usually live a couple weeks or even longer without food, but they can only survive a few days without water, especially in hot weather. In a small pen or pasture, stockmen generally make sure they have adequate water and monitor the source, but sometimes when cattle are out on large range pastures, we take for granted that they know where the water is.

Cattle that grow up on a ranch or range learn from their mothers and peers about the terrain (the best trails to get from A to B); the location of water troughs, springs, ponds or streams; and where the best feed might be. Purchased cattle going onto an unfamiliar range or large pasture are at a disadvantage unless there are resident/native cattle there to show them around, and it still pays to herd them to the various water sources so they will know where to go for water. A group of new animals — keeping to themselves — may not join up with the resident cattle and might not find the water.

“We’ve seen quite a few examples where yearlings, introduced to a new pasture, haven’t found the water,” says Eugene Janzen, professor of production animal health at the University of Calgary. “Some have died of dehydration. The animals are smart enough to follow the fenceline and try to go back to where they came into the pasture — trying to get back to where they came from for water. If the water facility is very far from the fenceline, however, they may not find it. I’ve heard horror stories about that problem, and have investigated some of them. The cattle walked the fence, grazed along the fence, making a wide path where they traveled back and forth trying to get back out and go to water.”

In other instances, groups of cattle new to the range were taken to one water source, but not the others. The newcomers did not join up with resident cattle that traveled over the range, but stayed and grazed around the only source they knew, until the feed was gone and they became emaciated. In one case, the water source (a spring) dried up to a mere seep later on in the summer, and the cattle suffered from lack of water. It always pays to take the time to move the new groups around during the first week or so of going into a new range so they can learn where the water sources are.

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Editor’s Note: Heather Smith Thomas is a cattlewoman and freelance writer from Salmon, Idaho.



 

 

 






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