Automatic waterers, pros, cons and other options?

ElleSkywalkingintheair

ElleSkywalkingintheair

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Hi all,

Thinking of getting automatic waterers when stables are re done to make life easier, but I have two very itchy ponies and am concerned about them itching then off the walls as they are wooden stables so harder to box in.

Is there such a thing as a ground level auto waterer? Or what ingenious things have other folks come up with?

Pictures would be ace :biggrin3:

Crumpets for all,

Elle xx
 
We have just the normal automatic drinkers on my yard, had a few itchy horses on over the years and *touch wood* none have taken one off yet! (We have had a few door knobs taken off the tackroom doors though :D)

Pro's: No lugging buckets when its cold and wet (we also have a device which stops the pipes freezing when it goes below a certain temp). Horse cannot flood the stable by knocking their bucket over.
Con's: Difficult to gauge how much a horse it drinking. Hard to clean out especially if a horse poos in one! Horse can still flood stable by wedging haylage into the filling mechanism.... We do have a couple who like to wet their own hay!

We've had a few people turn there's off and go back to buckets, but personally I love them!

No pictures sorry.

x x
 
There's all sets of waterers designed for smaller livestock so that's an option :) Pur do occasionally leak and need to be sorted but it saves so much time it's worth it! If you need to monitor the drinking we can turn each off so you can go back to bucket water to monitor.
 
Love mine! Saves so much time! Only downside is it's harder to monitor how much they are drinking. I do have one pony that itches her bum on them and when we only had the two top bolts in she did manage to knock it, but once we put 4 bolts in it has been fine.
 
Have had automatic drinkers for years, they save so much time and labour and mean that you need never worry about horses running out of water. They do need checking and cleaning like any other method of watering, we'd not go back to buckets by choice.
 
Thanks so far peeps *hands out crumpets*

Those of you that have them do you have the water pipes boxed in? The water will be coming from above I think as the base of stables is already in situ so it can't come up through the floor.
 
I've got them, put them in myself :) Water comes along the top of the front of the stables inside, through each wall by drilling a big hole. Then a T junction to each bowl in the corner. Bowls are bolted to the wall (did get a hand with this bit) and have never moved yet, the down pipes are flush into the corner so horses can't grip them. Pipes are lagged with foam lagging, the odd horse fancies removing this, but not many bother. That's it really, just clean them out each week.
 
The pipes aren't boxed in just have some lagging around them, will take a picture tonight if you want?
Been up 10+ years now so stood up to everyday use well really.
 
We've got the large rectangular automatic waterers that hold about 1.5 large Stubbs buckets of water each. Never had a problem with them being pulled off the wall but they are boxed in with heavy duty wooden frames.

The piping runs along the roof and then down the wall to each waterer. Unfortunately they are not lagged or boxed in so if it is going to be well below freezing I turn them off at the stopcock - we have one just for the waterers.

The advantage is that they have a plug at the bottom so cleaning them out is easy - just turn the water off, stick a large bucket under the drinker and pull the plug out. They also all have removable covers for the ballcock so we can adjust the level in the drinker down for those that like to dunk their hay in it. We have one drinker that is the more common small. shallow oval one and that is much harder to clean as there is not plug.

With nine horses they save so much time.

I never understand the argument about wanting to monitor water intake as my horses are out in the field for a big portion of the time and there is no way I can monitor what each horse is drinking from the field trough.
 
WE have had ours for a whole week and so far ratbag has pulled it off the wall, pooed in it, filled it with hay and then pooed in it. I think we will be going back to buckets. (I have no idea how he pooed in it as he isnt really tall enough)
 
We have large rectangular galvanised waterers, set at horses chest height - they hold about a bucket and a half of water.

Easy to clean, but we do have clean horses and big stables, wish I had them years ago :)
 
ElleSkywalker said:
Or this one http://www.robinsonsequestrian.com/nudge-wall-drinker-blue.html?rocket=product-customers-also-viewed although that one makes a hissing sound and some of my horses are a little, erm, sensitive!
Click to expand...

We have these, my dippy mare was fine with them as are all the little ponies. These ones are different to some others in that they are empty until the horse pushes their nose on the red bit and then the water comes out. They are easy to clean as you dont end up with a puddle of stale water in them. The old ones we had (in my youth!) had like a ball cock at the back, so they were always full of water and as the horse drank they refilled.
 
Oh I didn't say, I love them, I would not go back to water buckets now. Occasionally if its very cold we have to bucket water from the house out to the yard, what a pain! Our pipes are lagged with insulation and old tail bandages but if its below about minus 5 for a long time they do still freeze.
 
we had 1 at the event yard who was so naughty & was playing with the pipe that fed the drinker & pulled the pipe out of the drinker ! I got up in the morning & walked onto the yard & thought what is that noise. Walked round & the whole bloody stable was flooded & half the yard, horse was stood at the back of his box soaked looking at me as if to say "I'm captive in my own stable & it got me !!"
I ended up drenched & had to dry my hair because the stop cock was underneath where the pipe had broken so as I was trying to find it & turn it off I was getting a waterfall onto me.... got to love horses !
 
I have them in my stables and like them.
I have had one knocked off the wall when my old horse used to back in to it to scratch, she flooded 3 stables. We put a frame round hers and several bolts held it in place, it never came off again.
I have 2 who use it as a wall mounted toilet occasionally ........ Deep joy !
That said theyre easy to clean and id much rather have to deal with that on the odd occasion rather than howfing water buckets about each day
 
Sorry did forget to post the pics!!
Anyway here they are:
AB282816-DB11-465C-95B6-F985E12DEA14_zpsz2al82sy.jpg

BA06FD01-B24E-4377-9871-2931B9BD1741_zpsmz8iegct.jpg


The pipes are lagged and go up into the beams with the water tank above the stable at the end. There's a stop tap in the end tackroom and we have individual taps so we can turn them off if we want, you can just see this in the second pic at the top. Hope these help, I know people prefer plastic and bigger but these have done ok for the past ten years with (touch wood) no incidents.

x x x
 
Going against the grain here to say I don't like them!

I find them a pain to clean (I like clean water buckets everyday and cleaning drinkers out is fiddly and messy). When it freezes, the pipes can burst. You can't see how much water they are drinking like you can with a bucket. And last week mine decided to take his (unused thank god!) off the wall. He isn't even itchy, just far too curious!!

For the sake of filling some buckets I don't think the pros outweigh the cons for me :)
 
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