Idea for keeping water from freezing in paddock

Winters100

Winters100

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Hi All,

I am still struggling with this but I had one idea. When I was young my Father had a brief time of trying to make wine. The container had a heat strip around it. I am thinking could one (or several) of these be wrapped around the trough and connected to a car battery? Does anyone have any ideas about this?
Many thanks
 
Electricity, wet paddocks and a metal container of water are not a terrribly good mix. You might be better off with the tried and tested ball in the water. Break the ice daily - and remove the ice you break so it slows up the process off the ice skin reforming. I have had success with putting bubble wrap as an insulator around smaller containers - but you have to be sure the horse won't chew it.
 
Well I was thinking to use the rubber coated line and to connect it to a battery rather than the mains, and to put it around a plastic container. I am based in mainland Europe and where we are in much colder than the UK, so a ball won't work. Of course the ice can be broken by hand, but I don't trust the grooms to do it when I am not there.
 
I have just moved back to the UK from Alberta, where we used plug-in floating trough heaters to keep the water from freezing. There are two sorts - depending on whether your trough is plastic or metal. I don’t need them here, so have not investigated sourcing them in Europe, but I would have thought they would sell them somewhere? ??‍♀️

if you can’t find something, then the next best thing is to create a box around your trough and fill the gap with insulation foam (a bit like a giant thermos flask). Put a cover over it as well so that there is only a small opening for the horses to get their noses in (and to keep the heat in). Paint the whole lot black to absorb sunlight, and make sure it is in the sunniest position you have got.
 
Maybe a submersible, waterproof, battery powered kids bath toy?!

Itll keep moving and prevent the water freezing.

How the horses will react to it could be amusing!
 
When we had a pond with fish in the garden, we had a floating pond heater, low voltage, it looked like a floating mushroom, but you need it connected to electric
 
Winters100 said:
Hi All,

I am still struggling with this but I had one idea. When I was young my Father had a brief time of trying to make wine. The container had a heat strip around it. I am thinking could one (or several) of these be wrapped around the trough and connected to a car battery? Does anyone have any ideas about this?
Many thanks
Click to expand...
We have used gold fish and a ball floating, and salt not all together though
 
Well results so far are that we are too cold for the bottles of salt to work:( The ball worked a bit in the the ice on that trough was thinner than the others, but it has not been below -5 yet even at night, so I still have to find some better solution.......
 
You need advice from members who keep/ have kept horses in colder countries. Most of us don't have a huge amount of experience of really cold winters! There is a member who has horses in Canada, she might be good to ask if I can remember her name...!

Out of interest, why don't you trust the grooms to break the ice?
 
HashRouge said:
You need advice from members who keep/ have kept horses in colder countries. Most of us don't have a huge amount of experience of really cold winters! There is a member who has horses in Canada, she might be good to ask if I can remember her name...!

Out of interest, why don't you trust the grooms to break the ice?
Click to expand...


Thanks. Yes I did find a solar powered product in the US, but it costs almost 1000 USD and they won't ship to Europe (probably a good thing or I would be feeling guilty not to have it). Where we are it is really difficult to get good grooms. The one responsible for my horses is unreliable, every now and then drinks too much and causes chaos. But I do have a certain (albeit very small) amount of sympathy for the yard owner who says that generally he is OK and he has problems to find someone else. My main problem with the guy is that I see he does not like horses at all - for him it is just a job - so he would not care a bit if my horses had no water as long as it saved him a job. He does not even put water in the height of summer (high 30s) as he says the horses can wait to drink until they come inside. Considering mine are out from 6am to 6pm in summer I find this totally absurd. Of course in the warm months it doesn't really matter as I just fill huge troughs so I know they always have it, but winter is a problem as I cannot always guarantee to be there in the morning. For now I am managing by going most mornings myself, and on days I can't go asking one of the other owners to do it for me, but I would like a solution that does not involve me asking for favours. Paying the groom extra doesn't work - I tried that in summer when I went away for 4 days, by day 3 I had a message from another owner saying that mine were incredibly thirsty and she had filled the water. Also a few days ago I took water to the YOs own horses - they had none and were really thirsty. When I told him he was angry, but I saw again today that they had none until I messaged him about it. Moving yards is not really an option - I have looked around and I see that they all have problems, and at least here it is fairly close and I have a good support network of other owners. My only other option is to keep them at home, just about possible as we have enough land at a pinch and a barn which could easily be used as stables and hay storage, but it would be really difficult to ride other than in the forest (not very nice when it is -10 degrees), my other half is dead against it, and I don't know how I would manage getting the much heap taken away etc. Anyway I can manage, but life would be so much easier if I could rely on the yard to just break the ice twice a day!
 
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