Automatic water drinkers - yay or nay?

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kit279

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I've got mine at home and it's wonderful but it does take me a while to sort their water as got to run a hose from my outside tap to the stables then pack the hose back up again afterwards.

I'm thinking about getting automatic water drinkers - no idea what they're like or whether they're more hassle than they're worth.

Can anyone talk me through the pros and cons?

Thanks! :)
 
Nay for me, the are labour saving in terms of trugging buckets about but they are an arse to clean and you can't monitor what they are drinking. Also if they freeze you are stuck. I'd look at re-siteing you tap instead.
 
Personally don't like them as it makes it impossible to see how much water they are drinking. I like to check the water buckets when I turn out in the morning as a change from the norm can indicate a prob. Ours are also fussy sods and I would hate to think they would be put off drinking from them and I would never know. (I know I am an over worrier!).
 
I have the large Paxton 45 plastic corner fitting automatic water drinkers with drain plug and each fitted with an individual stopcock so as to be able to turn them off to clean them out. Would not be without them as they save water and time.
 
Yay for me but you must still be able to have buckets at the ready in case of a freeze. Ours are in an old shippon so not too bad except in very hard weather; it also depends which way the weather is blowing then too; one way they won't freeze, other way they will.
Don't know what the hassle is about cleaning them, they're easy peezy; just move the arm down, scrub them around, scoop it all out, run new water in again, change it again and then move arm back up to normal position so it can fill properly again; bet mine don't take five minutes each to do, if that. I don't like the ones with plugs because having youngsters it's only too easy for them to fiddle and play then flood everywhere.
 
Yay and a big one

I don't worry about how much water they are drinking as in reality there is little you can do about it. Still if you like lugging buckets of water around, you clearly have too much time on your hands!!

I have little drinkers that they push to get water. They love them and they are uber clean as water doesn't sit around. Downside is that they freeze easily!!
 
Not for me, had them here when we moved and took them all out. I, personally, prefer to have some sort of idea of their water consumption when stabled. I use big trugs, held in place, that they can't knock over. I also have a few that like to dunk their hay whilst eating.
 
Maesfen said:
Yay for me but you must still be able to have buckets at the ready in case of a freeze. Ours are in an old shippon so not too bad except in very hard weather; it also depends which way the weather is blowing then too; one way they won't freeze, other way they will.
Don't know what the hassle is about cleaning them, they're easy peezy; just move the arm down, scrub them around, scoop it all out, run new water in again, change it again and then move arm back up to normal position so it can fill properly again; bet mine don't take five minutes each to do, if that. I don't like the ones with plugs because having youngsters it's only too easy for them to fiddle and play then flood everywhere.
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Ditto all of this.

We had to go onto buckets because they froze at the really low temperatures. Oh, how much longer it took to do the barn, it's back breaking having to hunk all those buckets, give me auto waters any day.

If your horse is taking in less water, it will pee less, so there are other ways ( as well as the pinch test) to tell if your horse is de-hydrated. I find the 'you can't see how much they're drinking' theory an odd one tbh.
 
I have mostly had good experiences with them. Apart from one nervous 3yo I had who refused to drink out of it because of the scary noise it made when it filled up again. They have pluses and minuses, they make it impossible for your horse to gulp water which is very good for a colic prone horse but as mentioned earlier you have to turn them off and put buckets back in if you are monitoring how much they are drinking. If you have a horse that frequently kicks water buckets over then they save a lot of mess and worry for a horse owner
 
A big yay from me, we even have them in the crew yards and trust me, when they freeze up and you have 12 lots of water buckets to do you realise how time-consuming that would be on a daily basis.

As for the not being able to monitor how much they're drinking, I see them drinking, I can tell by their droppings and colour of their wee if they're properly hydrated, and by pinching their skin also, so not a problem I think.

Cleaning them out is done daily, with a sponge and a bucket, then letting them refill - hardly arduous. :rolleyes:
 
Jen_Cots said:
Yay and a big one

I don't worry about how much water they are drinking as in reality there is little you can do about it.
You can tell quite quickly that there is a problem with you horse, as a reduction or increase in the amount of water drunk can be one of the first indivcators that something is wrong, you may not be able to fix the problem but at least you will know about it and can monitor it before it gets to serious.

Would rather carry buckets of water than risk have an auto system. Maybe look into getting the outside tap moved closer to the stables. But otherwise big big NO from me.
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I would recommend them and you can put something in each pipe to each drinker to monitor the water drunk. Sorry can't remember what it is called!

Saves so much time and back ache! Cleaning is easy too.
 
Bovril said:
You can tell quite quickly that there is a problem with you horse, as a reduction or increase in the amount of water drunk can be one of the first indivcators that something is wrong, you may not be able to fix the problem but at least you will know about it and can monitor it before it gets to serious.
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But in reality is this true? I have 7 horses and can pick up when something is wrong before water consumption drops, in fact in 25 years I don't think water consumption has ever been an indication of a problem.
 
Bovril said:
You can tell quite quickly that there is a problem with you horse, as a reduction or increase in the amount of water drunk can be one of the first indivcators that something is wrong, you may not be able to fix the problem but at least you will know about it and can monitor it before it gets to serious.
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I am not sure I can agree with that statement regarding water buckets, especially in the summer months when turned out 24/7 :)
My boy has had to have a bucket in for quite a few weeks this winter due to the freeze and I really missed the drinkers especially the time I tipped some water down the inside of my boot when carrying the bucket!
In the 5 (ish) weeks he had a bucket some mornings the bucket was half full, others almost to the top and on a couple of days he had almost finished the lot off... at no time was he dehydrated. In the milder weather some mornings he goes straight to the water trough for a drink and on other days he doesn't.

Thumbs up from me for the time (and back) saving, a quick sponge and rinse is so quick and easy compared to rinsing, filling and carrying buckets around.
 
oh YES I love em. You can get them with drain ports at the bottom makes them easy to clean, TBH my 2's are always clean even when i dont clean them! Depends if you have a hay dunker!!!
 
Huge yay from me too.

Mine have the drains in them which you need to undo a screw cap underneath to let them run out. There's no way for the horse to undo this and the seal is perfect.

All I do is turn the stop cocks off, undo the drain cap and swill them all around as the water is emptying. I do this once a week. Fasten all the drain caps back up (I have five stables), turn the water back on and HEY presto!

One of mine won't drink from hers and I hate that I still have to take buckets in for her. It's obvious that they won't drink from them....they get dusty on the top, always seem desperate for a drink when you turn them out, don't eat as much hay/haylage and the poops are firmer/wee less. We're going to swap hers for a different sort as I did notice she will drink from the ones in the other stables, which are a totally different style to hers.

They did freeze in the cold snap, eventually, and I had to lug buckets for 4 days. 4 days bucket lugging is SOOO much more of an attractive prospect than 365 days!
 
Yay! They are worth their weight in gold. Make sure you lag them properly though. One of our blocks always freezes if you have more than a few nights in a row below freezing, the other block waters only freeze if it's minus 8 or colder for several nights. Wouldn't be without them. Even when frozen, I found it much easier to defrost them than use buckets, just a trickle of hot water around the valve and they are defrosted.
 
a yay here too. infact, since I bought and installed mine at the last yard I "ripped" it out and took it with me! Unfortunatly my current stable doesn't have water pipes anywhere near, so I am back to buckets...however, give me 1/2 a chance and I will reinstall it!
 
I am a bit apprehensive about automatic drinkers. Dehydration is a silent disorder. It can sneak up quickly and result in total organ failure. Rapid loss of water from the horse's system, as little as 20%, can cause instant death, so, for me it's the 'ol' bucket as my mare doesn't spill hers and I can monitor what she is drinking every day to prevent her from becoming dehydrated.

It’s easy to take water for granted but even the slightest dehydration affects a horse adversely.

Dehydration may result in muscle damage, reduced kidney function, laminitis, coma or death. It can cause overheating, restricted circulation to peripheral veins and muscle cramps due to lactic acid not being removed from the muscles. It can also cause colic due to excessive re-absorption of food from the large intestine. Dehydration can affect stamina, concentration, ability to recover from work, increase the onset of fatigue by 20% and reduce appetite. These symptoms can become present in succession quite quickly and its effects can be lingering.

Serious fluid disturbances can result in muscle disorders, such as tying up, which can cause a horse to collapse. There is also an alarming syndrome of heat stroke and dehydration, often lumped together as "the exhausted horse complex", which is the great fear for anyone competing a horse in hot, humid conditions.

Horses lack a sensitive thirst mechanism. This insensitivity makes dehydration common among horses. The thirst mechanism in humans is also not very sensitive to dehydration. During and following exercise especially, humans, like horses, are slow to replace their fluid losses, prolonging dehydration and its deleterious consequences.

A skin pinch test cannot always be relied upon to assess your horse’s hydration level. Delayed skin tent times are normally not evident until a horse has reached at least 3% dehydration and dehydration losses of 3-4% body weight lost as fluid will have an adverse effect on the horse's health even though there may be no obvious signs of dehydration. In fact a horse can lose about 5% of his body weight in fluids (50 pounds or six gallons) before he shows much sign of dehydration. A horse at a dehydration level of 5% requires 22 litres (about 5.5 gallons) of fluid to correct the dehydration. A 5% loss of body weight by fluid will cause cardiovascular strain. If a horse’s body loses 10% of its water content the blood volume decreases dramatically. Diarrhea begins, sweating stops and the heart and respiratory rates go up. If a horse’s body loses 20% of its water content the horse dies.

I have a vested interest in horses’ drinking habits in that I sell one of the available products that gets horses drinking immediately, when and where you want them to, but I don’t want to contravene the HHO advertising rules so I won’t mention it here, but that is why I know quite a lot about the potentially deadly effects of dehydration and why I am a 'bucket girl' although I am sure with modern-engineering, automatic drinkers and the measurers mentioned on here, can work well too.
 
I love mine, although the first ones I had were the large corner ones and they held quite alot of water, so ally the water was never drunk and they became smelly and horrid really quick. So I now have the small ones and they are great - really easy to clean, can do four in about five minutes. :D
 
Yay, have had them for years without a problem. I couldnt manage without them and had this reinforced during the freeze when it was all frozen and I had to bucket to 20 boxes. I hope I dont face that again, no problem cleaning them and I have 2 different types and all the horses use them without any problem even the foals. As said before you soon spot a problem with your horse before waiting to see if his water consumption has dropped.
 
yes .. they are fantastic. easy and quick to clean, and water doesnt get spilt. mine save me hours every day .. 20 stables. the only thing i would do differently if i was installing again would be to put electric tracer cables on the pipes to stop them freezing. i only loose mine after several very cold nights/days in a row as the system is circular so if each horse keeps slurping then the water keeps moving.
 
Lucinda said:
I am a bit apprehensive about automatic drinkers. Dehydration is a silent disorder. It can sneak up quickly and result in total organ failure.
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How many horses, who have auto waters in their stable have died of dehydration?
Do you have any statistics?
 
The ones we have at the yard, nay for sure! They freeze at the drop of a hat, then the pipes burst and when they thaw they flood the yard. Also when you have a large thug of a horse that pulls the bung out, floods the yard and you have to replace (both in terms of money and manual labour!) bedding for 9 of the other liveries, you really learn to hate them! :D
The problems with ours are copper pipes and large rubber bungs that the horses can easily get hold of. I have mine turned off and lug water around instead, never an issue with my older horse, he never drinks much in his stable, goes out and drinks half the trough, but young mare drinks a huge trug tub dry in the blink of an eye :rolleyes: :D
 
My bizarre horse has decided that the automatic water feeder in his stable makes a very comfy chair and keeps planting his big bum on it. He bent it enough that the water started to flood out of it and we had to shut it off.
 
Mike007 said:
A definate nay from me. One yard I know uses automatic waterers with a large bowl and in the summer the water is FETID.
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The same people may use large water buckets/trugs too which would also become stagnant and smelly if not cleaned out often enough and the unused water changed.

The problem isn't the water drinkers, it's the maintenance/cleaning regime at fault.
 
True enough, but I fear that only a lazy person would put the benefits of a horse waterer above the benefits of knowing how much good clean water ones horse drinks ,and take a pride in giving them this. As an aside I was discussing the old galvanised buckets with a friend yesterday. OK they could be a hazard ,yet they were much more hygenic. The zink killed off all the bugs.
 
Sometimes horsey people are surprisingly old fashioned for no good reason! Most automatic water drinkers come with an individual stop cock and plug so they are as easy to clean as buckets - if you clean out your buckets every day nothing is stopping you from cleaning out your drinkers every day. Apart from the fact that you can tell if the horse has not drunk from the drinker, and that you can now buy drinkers that measure consumption, you can also buy small water meters at your local plumber's metchant and install them in each drinker - that way you can really know water consumption and you don't risk unoticed dehydration because your horse tipped over its bucket in the middle of the night (scaremongering goes both ways!).
 
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