Frozen. How do you all cope?

If there's a mains connection nearby, it doesn't really cost that much to dig a trench and plumb in water troughs. So long as the water is kept running, even a pipe laid on the surface won't freeze unless it gets really cold.

Here are a couple of my modified water troughs. This will work if (a) you don't pay water rates (I don't!), and (b) have somewhere (a ditch?) you can dispose of the over flow. So the water keeps running and doesn't freeze. Cost, excluding the pipe which is an off cut, is about £5 per trough plus labour.

All it needs is a hole drilled in the side of the trough BELOW the fill level, then a couple of adaptors for connecting an alkathene pipe to a cold water tank. A few metres of pipe take the water to the nearest drain or ditch. You can regulate the rate with which the water over flows (or stop it altogether) by lowering or raising the pipe.

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Become a neurotic weather-watcher like me :) compare a couple of different weather reports and go with the worst one. I print off a copy for the livery yard so everyone else can see too and act accordingly (i.e use the scraper to send all surface water down the drain after hosing, tipping water buckets directly down the drain instead of throwing them over the yard). Fill dustbins or baths with water in readiness. The outside tap with the hose on always freezes, but the tap inside the yard gets bagged up with plastic and its only if its -10 or lower that it will freeze. I always take a boiled kettle out with me though just in case. If the tap is frozen, leave a large bucket under it and turn tap on, get on with mucking out and if its not too bad it usually defrosts itself.
I get up earlier on mornings that i'm expecting to be frozen so that i can put grit out before liveries get here, and defrost tap for them.
When breaking ice on troughs or buckets, use an old sieve to get the ice fragments out, this stops it from refreezing so quickly and saves your hands from frostbite :)

Seems winter is just one long battle - either battling the rain and saturated ground, or the big freeze!
 
We're luckily not too bad so far this year but a couple of years when we were badly frozen for several weeks we had to switch off and drain all the drinkers. If we don't when they thaw the numerous bursts cause a real mess and waste loads of bedding. All the yard water was frozen including the header tanks so we ran a hose out of the house utility room window as we had 33 horses to water. In order to keep the hose running we had to run it with slightly warm water as it froze whilst running with just cold water. The minute we stopped it we had to coil it up and store it in the house immediately otherwise we had to submerge it in a large sink of hot water to thaw again.

Good luck to everyone struggling at the moment!
 
Dry Rot said:
If there's a mains connection nearby, it doesn't really cost that much to dig a trench and plumb in water troughs. So long as the water is kept running, even a pipe laid on the surface won't freeze unless it gets really cold.

Here are a couple of my modified water troughs. This will work if (a) you don't pay water rates (I don't!), and (b) have somewhere (a ditch?) you can dispose of the over flow. So the water keeps running and doesn't freeze. Cost, excluding the pipe which is an off cut, is about £5 per trough plus labour.

All it needs is a hole drilled in the side of the trough BELOW the fill level, then a couple of adaptors for connecting an alkathene pipe to a cold water tank. A few metres of pipe take the water to the nearest drain or ditch. You can regulate the rate with which the water over flows (or stop it altogether) by lowering or raising the pipe.

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That's pure genius :D:D
 
I'm a livery and to be honest havent had a problem. Yes the ground it too hard to ride and the school is frozen, but my field is 30 ft from my stable and we gritted a path for them before turning out this morning, they'll be out all day. We have 3 taps, one always freezes, one sometimes freezes and the other (touching wood) rarely freezes, it is well insulated and has a box built around it, stuffed with insulation.
 
I put a bucket of water in an empty stable which backs onto the muck heap so stays warm and that gets chucked in with her overnight water in the morning if the tap is frozen. A friend then refills her water during the day when the tap has been defrosted

(she is currently being kept in with school access and work everyday)

I take a plastic milk bottle filled with very hot water to the yard in the morning from home for her feed to warm it through and then again I refill it before i leave work and add it to her evening feed.

Im sure its not required but i like the thought of her eating a warm bucket of food :o
 
Heat tape :D cost a bit but taps don't freeze and the drinkers work fine and the 2 of the fields have a double trough through the fence that is one of the insulated frost free ones so although it cost more to buy than the normal plastic ones (thats why theres only 1) its made things so much easier this winter. lugging water across fields is no fun especially when the taps freeze or someone frgets to drain the hose :( for anyone with horses at home and electic points I can really reccomend getting at least one tap heat taped as it makes things so much easier
 
Taps all iced up, going to try & defrost them in a bit.

Had a bale of hayledge delivered Sunday, should have lasted 2 weeks but half the bale was rotten, & tractor frozen so can't get another bale :rolleyes: have enough left for today & tonight but that's it :( Is my own homemade hayledge so no one to complain to ;)

OH has nicked my car to get to work so can't even go get some small bales :rolleyes:

Horses all nice & warm tho, gingerface has a turnout & stable rug on so is nicely toasty!
 
Rebels said:
No snow here yet but frozen very very hard so no water. Stable buckets were filled up last night so the 5 lads had water when they came in. The 2 girls wont leave their straw filled shelter so i delivered hay and water to their door. Yearling and new forest have a 10 acre field to graze so being mean and only haying at night. Not sure how to manage snow with no arena to turnout and no eletricity for a kettle. When it gets colder our water freezes underground so we have to bring water for 11 from home 20mins away!
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Water for eleven!? :eek:

I have it easy I think.
 
Ginge Crosby said:
Become a neurotic weather-watcher like me :) compare a couple of different weather reports and go with the worst one. I print off a copy for the livery yard so everyone else can see too and act accordingly (i.e use the scraper to send all surface water down the drain after hosing, tipping water buckets directly down the drain instead of throwing them over the yard). Fill dustbins or baths with water in readiness. The outside tap with the hose on always freezes, but the tap inside the yard gets bagged up with plastic and its only if its -10 or lower that it will freeze. I always take a boiled kettle out with me though just in case. If the tap is frozen, leave a large bucket under it and turn tap on, get on with mucking out and if its not too bad it usually defrosts itself.
I get up earlier on mornings that i'm expecting to be frozen so that i can put grit out before liveries get here, and defrost tap for them.
When breaking ice on troughs or buckets, use an old sieve to get the ice fragments out, this stops it from refreezing so quickly and saves your hands from frostbite :)

Seems winter is just one long battle - either battling the rain and saturated ground, or the big freeze!
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You are SO organised!
 
Dry rot, your water tank idea is really good. I couldn't do it here as I'm on a metre though, and also have nowhere fore the water to drain into.
 
crabbymare said:
Heat tape :D cost a bit but taps don't freeze and the drinkers work fine and the 2 of the fields have a double trough through the fence that is one of the insulated frost free ones so although it cost more to buy than the normal plastic ones (thats why theres only 1) its made things so much easier this winter. lugging water across fields is no fun especially when the taps freeze or someone frgets to drain the hose :( for anyone with horses at home and electic points I can really reccomend getting at least one tap heat taped as it makes things so much easier
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*goes to google heat tape* :):)
 
I think the pipes under the ground supplying my water at the yard have not been buried deep enough because even a hard frost stops the flow. I have 4 giant water carriers that my husband keeps in his estate car.

I am tempted to try what a Welsh friend of mine does. She has a bath under her tap and leaves it running at slightly more than dribble all day and night. She has a bucket that she uses to fill the stable buckets so the water stays clean.
 
Ive always been quite lucky to have a large stream through the field and unlimited turnout hey with woodland so horses preferred to be out than in - however when in the tap could be frozen for days...

The YO would fill old large metal milk pails - with lids on - the water inside never froze... Very odd!

From an other point of view - I have now switched to heavy stable rug and if the Wug is drying - he has an under blanket for turnout and bandaging his legs as night as hes old.
 
It is completely beyond me why these things haven't found their way to the UK yet after the past few winters, even my rabbits have heated waterbowls. Heated buckets, heated hosepipes, floating tank heaters etc, etc...probem solved.

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http://www.nextag.com/heated-water-buckets/products-html

As for rolling and draining heavy hosepipes, just for yard work etc these are excellent, they aren't designed for heavy duty stuff but mine work OK.

I can pick up 300' of hose in one hand, stuff it in a bucket and put it in the house overnight if I have to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_z8xyI1veU
 
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We have well water to the house, and another well in the lane that feeds down a hosepipe to the stables. The hose is on the ground for part of the way, so freezes immediately when the temp drops, and I have to walk up the lane to the stone trough and fill buckets from there. Not such a big deal when we only have two horses now.

If I suspect frost, I fill trugs of water and put them in the feed room (rubber floor surrounded by straw and with a rug over the top of them.

I bring milk tubs of hot water down to give the hens (who love it!) and pour over any shallow ice on the top of buckets to melt it.

We really slipped up with our tap's location - it is on a north facing wall of the yard, which is convenient for drainage, but means the sun doesn't ever defrost it! We are thinking of putting a "winter tap" on the other end of the block!

I'm lucky that we have the road planings area around the stable, which they are turned out on in winter, it has been a godsend for all bad weathers. The best £300 we ever spent. Think we will extend it this summer!

We have enough haylage and straw for a couple of months. I'm just gutted that I hardly rode over the end of Dec/early Jan as I needed my clipper blades sharpening and my mare sweats for England. Just as I got them done and clipped her, it snowed, and has now frozen, so I wouldn't risk riding. She will have grown her hair back by the time I get on her again!
 
Perissa said:
I am tempted to try what a Welsh friend of mine does. She has a bath under her tap and leaves it running at slightly more than dribble all day and night. She has a bucket that she uses to fill the stable buckets so the water stays clean.
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We tried that - put an old bath at the corner of the yard and fed the well water into it, but it just ended up full of labradors, and eventually mud as a consequence!:D
 
My tap is usually ok to about minus 3 - I wrap it in bubble wrap to protect it a bit. Water in the field and stable is ok for me as I use water butts attached to my guttering and can usually smash the ice on top each day to get water underneath.
Soaking my hay is a problem though as when the tap freezes I am stuffed and he has to have dry then...not ideal as he has copd but no other solution for now. I will be investing in a hay steamer and bin though as that should get me through more extremes of weather and prevent me having to give him dry.
 
i knew it was going to be cold last night so i filled up both Taz and Rio's 60gallon water buckets in their stables as then if the waters frozen then i dont have to worry about it. they have automatic drinkers in their stables but i dont use them so it doesnt matter whether they are frozen or not :). we have several water buts dotted about the yard which are all full at the moment and i filled up a feed bin and some water carriers and put them in my step dads work shop as it doesnt get that cold in there. water in the field was topped up yesterday and broken this morning. other than that not all that much :) i only really have to worry about my two but if everyone else is struggling then im more than happy to help :)
 
We have a field drain that keeps going in most weathers, very handy for times like this. I broke the ice on their field trough this morning, although I could see they had already done this themselves. We are also very lucky in having a spring fed stone trough that is set in at ground level with was completely unfrozen this morning, impressive given how cold it was last night!
 
We do turn out as it is a large field so they can walk around we put haylage out which lasts them the first hour. We have bought melting ice stuff that you can use on concrete so the yard is clear. We take home water containers to fill at home and bring back each day.
No riding and regionals coming up but too dangerous to drive our lorry on our lane and arena frozen.
 
My tap froze yesterday at -7 so this morning it was filling buckets under the kitchen tap. Luckily my stables are only yards away from the back door. The trough in the field was frozen solid and even my great weight didn't crack it so I resorted to my hubbys sledge hammer :) Worked a treat! I've put down a heap of salt outside the stables today and I'm lucky in that the field is about 10 paces from the stables across grass so no problems getting them out. I haven't ridden for 2 months tho but at least my youngster will have had some time to grow a bit!
 
I envy anyone with a hot water tap nearby! I was not so lucky...we had water feeder but despite all lagging etc plastic piping I always in weather like this fill up 25 litre canisters with hot water via hosepipe from house and drive the to independent water containers (aka mallet hammer...which when this wouldnt budge it would be emptied if possible) and hot water would be poured in. I would have to do this twice daily if the first lot froze up!

I have had blow torch(waste of time) but hot water was the only thing. In a shelter a bucket in the corner did do the job too. The 300liter container I have would be a big ice cube.
 
We have a water but that collects rain water. It holds loads of water and all we have to do is defrost the handle once a day. The hosepipe and tap are taken off and wrapped up.

On another yard, I know someone who had the hosepipe constantly running at a trickle and hides it in a large plastic tube and it works!
 
Other than that, I've been at yards that you need to traipse water buckets from the kitchen :eek: out. On another yard we had to bring up our own water which was rather difficult given I only have 2 small carriers. I think I used every piece of Tupperware I owned!
 
My poor lad is out in a waterlogged field, he doesn't like being in and is not in work so it seemed a good idea when we found it, and it was dry and well covered. There is water in the fields and we take the ice off his trough, but if it freezes underground we have some containers at the ready. There is plenty of water in pools in the field so he would not go without. There is a really well drained sand and rubber arena, so he goes in there for a play sometimes, and gets really excited at the good going!:rolleyes:

But he has mud to his elbows, his feet seem to be bearing up, but I hate it, I would much rather be able to bring him in to a nice dry warm stable every night. The yard we moved him from is under water and the school and paddocks unusable, so he is in the better place for him, I think.:(

Today he was walking funny when he came up for his feed, and kept jumping and turning around....his tail was frozen into icy dreadlocks and banging his legs as he moved. OH got the scissors to it and my foot (I thought that would be plenty) became two foot...............so now we have re-named the horse Bob, in honour of his new hair do!:eek:

It will soon grow.......:D
 
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