Frozen Water Troughs...Any Ideas?

Some people put a tennis ball in... At the very least you then have a hole in the ice which will help to break the ice. Never tried it myself though so can't say how good it is!
 
Thats weird as I was only thinking last night i might put a post about this myself! The only thing I thought of was an apple floating in the water, but had visions of my horse applebobbing in the night and water pouring over my stable floor to make a nice ice rink for him to skate on in the morning.
 
Put something in that will float - as it moves around stops the water from freezing - failing that some people use salt - not sure if that works though - just another idea!
 
Tennis ball for stable water and a slightly deflated football for the feild trough... works a treat because it moves around whenever they drink, therefore preventing the top layer from freezing...
 
I've tried the tennis ball thing over the last couple of weeks, but all that has happened is the ball has been frozen into the ice
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. I think that's probably because there has been no wind here, so it hasn't bobbed around in the trough much.
 
A floating tennis ball is supposed to help for some reason. I keep meaning to try this, but it always slips my mind until too late.

My gang had managed to make a hole in their trough yesterday morning somehow. It was a smooth edged hole though, so I really don't know if they somehow melted an area with their warm breath (daft as it may seem)??? However, I still had to use a hammer to break the rest of the ice on the trough as it was a good 2 inches thick.

Am taking 25 gallons of extra water up this evening, as I suspect the underground pipes are now frozen as well, meaning the trough won't fill up automatically until we have a thaw.
 
We have a football floating in the big troughs in the fields, which has been such a help! Still have to break and remove inches of ice, but it makes it so much easier. Haven't had anything in the stables freeze yet (knock on wood).
 
Sadly I don't - we have stand pipes and hoses and fill plastic containers. It was -3C at 10.00am this morning (I am in northern Loire). We have lagged our stand pipes with bubble wrap and can get the taps going quite quickly with a bit of warm water.

You could try covering them with gardners fleece - I have coriander growing outside under a fleece. Try putting some sacks of horse manure around the tank.
 
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