You can lead a cow to water...

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."

This old saying essentially means that you can give an animal or a person the OPPORTUNITY to do something, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they are going to do it.  Animals, and people, can be hard-headed.  To punctuate that further, they like to have free will - a choice to do something or not do something. We're faced with this every day.  I like to make my own decisions.  It appears that animals do as well. Just like people, sometimes they 'dig in their heels' so to speak and fight you every step of the way even though what you're trying to do for them is helpful.

In a literal sense, however, we have no problem with our animals finding the water trough and drinking from it.  Our current water troughs are four 30 gallon tubs that at one time contained a molasses mineral lick for the cows at the farm.  I also have a number of them under the drip line of our roof in the back of the house to catch rainwater.  I use this water to fill the four water troughs in the pasture that all the four footed creatures drink from - actually Benjamin does this and it can be time-consuming.

A good friend of ours approached us at church and told us that he had a water trough that he no longer used and was wondering if we'd have any use for it?  Absolutely! He brought it over the other afternoon and Benjamin and I were anxious to install it. We loaded it on the wagon and pulled it to the watering location.

New water trough

As you can see below, it is a Rubbermaid container so it's not going to rust and has a 150 gallon capacity. Nice!

It also came with an Automatic Float Valve.  Currently, when we run out of rainwater, we pull the water hose to the water troughs and turn the water on.  When one fills we switch to the other.  One flaw that I have is I don't like to just stand around.  While the water bucket is filling, I find something else to do.  I'd be guilty of being Pinocchio if I didn't tell you that sometimes I forget about the water and leave it on.  I've even left it on overnight and walked outside to find a flooded portion of pasture (and an inflated water bill).  This float valve solves that problem!

Float Valve to the rescue!

I'll show you how it works if you're unfamiliar.  It is an ingenious contraption.  The red plastic part you see below is the float.  The hose you see was just to get the trough mostly full.  Once it was mostly full, I turned off the water and screwed the hose into the "Trough-O-Matic" female piece that you can see at the top right hand side of the apparatus.

Now that it is screwed in, the water flows through the device and into the trough.

The days are getting shorter.  As you can see it was getting dark on me and my buddy.  With the darkness came hordes of mosquitoes.  We were anxious to finish the job and get inside.  One thing I realized at about this point, is that I should've ensured that the trough was level.  I'll show you why in a minute.

Almost full!

As the trough fills the water pressure pushes upward against a valve that will close off all water flow.  The picture shows that the float is almost in the horizontal position which completely shuts it off.  The water is only barely coming in the tank now.  

The reason you want to make sure that your trough is on level ground is that if it is not level, one side of the tank could potentially have water running over the side and the side with the float valve could be too high, allowing water to run and run and run. Fortunately, even though the ground wasn't perfectly level, it was good enough to not allow spillage.

You can tell that the water pressure has completely shut off the water flow.  As the animals drink, the water level in the trough, along with the float, will fall, allowing the water to flow again until the trough is full.  One thing that my friend told me is that once it is full, turn the water spigot way back.  There's no rush to fill the trough and if there is a problem with your hose or float valve, you won't lose as much water. Great idea!!

New water trough installed

This new water trough is a big time saver for us.  It has a plug in the bottom to allow for easy cleaning. Benjamin even talked about getting some goldfish to put in it!  Once we get enough rain stored in the rain barrels, we can turn the water off and fill the 150 gallon trough with rain water - it's truly the best of both worlds.