Anyone else got no water at their yard!?

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MizElz

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We've been without tap water for the last three days now
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There is a trough in the bull pen (lol - its quite funny taking it in turns to run the gauntlet!) which has so far not quite frozen, so we're trudging back and forth with buckets at the moment. If that freezes, then it's off to the river we go!

Ellie was NOT happy with me last night; I was unable to fill the kettle up so she couldnt have her customary warm dinner. I must be soft; I've brought her dinner home with me this morning so I can heat it here and take it up warm this evening
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We've been without water a few times and I now take some 6 pint of milk containers filled with water down with me.
Beats me how they can drink the water once I've broken the ice on the buckets, if it was me, it'd give me a wanging headache.
 
Yep, been filling buckets in the office sink for a week! Yesterday one of the taps burst so we did have water, in the shape of a gushing waterfall for about 20 mins until someone found the stopcock!
Ours have drinkers, so YM had not realised just how much my mare guzzles....
 
Been without water 3 days too. Yesterday had to take 2 huge water carriers up, one of those was the rolling type - you should have seen me trying to roll it up the frozen driveway, kept sliding back down again, LOL.

Ice on troughs was 3" thick this morning, could hardly break it! Hope this freeze doesn't last for 2 long.
 
We can't soak hay as it will freeze before it is eaten; we are steaming it in a dustbin. The feed bowls are freezing where they have been washed! No water, Troggy lugs it down from the house in two big containers (Army surplus - way to go). We are always economical with water as we are on a meter, but now we are getting even better!
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Had water yesterday, but has been on and off with the cold weather. Luckily have a spring/field drain that comes out just a short walk from the stables so have been using that as its still going. Probably more natural water for them too
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Trough in field is still working I think, but again, they have a trough which fills form a spring too, and they tend to drink form that anyway
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Yes i haven't had water for the last four mornings, we are filling containers from home for the stables and the fields have troughs, a river and a natural pond.

Its not great as we can't clean anything properly ie feed buckets.
 
Our YO filled a 2000 litre tank for us with the tap at the bottom that is lagged to stop it freezing. so far it has worked as the wtaer freezes at the top but the water comes out from the bottom.
 
All ours have automatic feeders in their stable...deffo is gonna make me appreciate them when this coldness goes away!
We've got to fill bottles and buckets from the house, put them ina wheel barrow to outside and into their buckets. (Also had to hunt for old water buckets as its been so long:P)
 
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We can't soak hay as it will freeze before it is eaten; we are steaming it in a dustbin....

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Same here. A nifty trick learned from HHO that I had stored in my memory bank but not used until the current state of emergency! Several dustbins are now appearing by the kettle, so it's obviously catching on.

(The kettle gets filled from whatever unfrozen water can be found, so hopefully no one is going to want a cup of tea unless they like roughage in it).

Also, who needs kick boxing classes when you can go round the fields kicking through the ice on the frozen troughs?

Does it feel like survival mode for anyone else?
 
My yard we have gone from 3 taps to only one which is furthest away from the yard by the office. So we have to trudge round. Tap that is working doesn't have a drain either, so at the weekend when we had 40+ buckets to clean for feeds, we had to get tub after tub and trudge round to a drain.

Very fustrating!
 
Outside taps are frozen but the tap inside the stable block and the auto water drinkers are holding out and still running at present. Thank God!

I'm having to break the ice on the water trough in the field at least twice a day as it just freezes back over again in no time.

Ours are brick built stables, so possibly a bit warmer than those of you with wooden build sheds/stables.
 
Taps were frozen this morning for the first time, but managed to get one going, so topped up all the water containers I could find (I'm the only one there in mornings).

When I had auto waterers on my own yard, I always kept a few dustbins full of water that could be used in an emergency, but I guess they'd have been empty after 3 days.
 
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Also, who needs kick boxing classes when you can go round the fields kicking through the ice on the frozen troughs?

Does it feel like survival mode for anyone else?

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Wish I could get my leg up high enough to break the ice on the huge round, black "cow" water trough in the fields!!! I have a broken wooden fence rail that I "stab" through the ice. Took me twenty minutes yesterday to make a hole big enough. The horses were queuing up by the trough when I'd finished!
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Biggest problem we have is waiting for it to get warm enough so that we can turn the water back on to the troughs to refill them. They're getting a little low now for the tiddly ponies to reach into. About 2/3 full.
 
We haven't had any water at the yard for 6 days now.

The other morning one of the OHS' put a blow torch on the tap and deforsted it that way.

Yesterday I managed to defrost it with water from the kettle but that didn't work this morning.
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There is a holiday cottage on the yard so we are able to get water from its wash house.
 
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Outside taps are frozen but the tap inside the stable block and the auto water drinkers are holding out and still running at present. Thank God!

I'm having to break the ice on the water trough in the field at least twice a day as it just freezes back over again in no time.

Ours are brick built stables, so possibly a bit warmer than those of you with wooden build sheds/stables.

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I have a brick built stable, one of only 7 on the yard, and I still have the same problems as the people in wooden built stables. Its rubbish not having the automatic drinkers working
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Ours are internal stables with an aisle in front of the loose boxes to walk in/out of the block. I will admit I've been shutting the outside door that gains entry to the stable block overnight. It has two doors and in these temperatures I've been shutting the top door as well, whereas we only normally shut the bottom door.

There is still plenty of ventilation in there, but it has stopped the water freezing so far.
 
Out of the three yard taps only one is working. We've poured kettles and kettles of boiling water over the other two but can't get them working. The automatic troughs in the field are frozen solid. Buckets of water were freezing in the stables last night too.
 
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Out of the three yard taps only one is working. We've poured kettles and kettles of boiling water over the other two but can't get them working. The automatic troughs in the field are frozen solid. Buckets of water were freezing in the stables last night too.

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Are the yard taps lagged?
 
i am filling up drums of hot water/warm water from my bathroom.(outside tap frozen)when poured into the troughs it melts the ice enough to break it all up.
been like this for a few days now.

one of the youngsters has been breaking quite thick ice with his hoof.all the others stand around watching him and then he looks very smug while they all drink.
 
We have some taps, just depends which ones are working. We are on spring water pumped into a header tank then down into the yard so it can freeze at any point along the system so its not always at the tap.

I've taken to filling a container with luke warm water from the tap in the garage at home, plus feeds are soaked in the kitchen every day.
 
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Does it feel like survival mode for anyone else?


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Hell yes!
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I look like Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes when I set foot outside of a morning!

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LOL, I felt like a sort of retro terrorist this morning in my black knitted ballaclava, 8' long red knitted scarf wound round my neck 3 times and knotted elegantly under my chin, warm jacket, jeans, wellies and just to add a bit of glamour, yellow marigolds.

Mmmmm.
 
We have an electric shower at the yard in the bathroom so we're pulling water from there ATM as it's the only working tap. The electric drinkers froze up a week ago and the ones in the field are pretty much frozen solid now too
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I don't remember a winter this cold for a long time!
 
I'm having to take the U-bend from under the sink and run the tap to get water from the loo-sink as all the taps have been frozen for 3 days now.
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Yup - everything frozen solid. In the paper today it said it was "warmer" in the Antarctic! I now know what a woolly mammoth must have felt like every day of its wretched life. No wonder they decided to become extinct.

However, our YO and her OH are brill and have moved water troughs, scraped ice with the tractor, opened up her kitchen tap to all comers, you name it, she's done it to make sure neds are not dying of thirst. I'm certain that if the worst comes to the worst she would open up her wine cellar and pour her best riocha into ned's water buckets. ????? Yes Llwyncwn ???????
 
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