Water Part of a series of 7 articles about CowSignals to improve health production and welfare of your cows THIS IS A SERIES OF 7 ARTICLES ABOUT COWSIGNALS TO IMPROVE HEALTH PRODUCTION AND WELFARE OF YOUR COWS. CONTENT 7 ARTICLES: FEED, WATER, LIGHT, AIR, REST, SPACE AND HEALTH. THIS TIME THE ARTICLE ABOUT WATER. Author: Joep Driessen is a Dutch dairy vet with 15 years experience in advising dairy farmers in 45 countries. His Vetvice team is active in CowSignals training, Barn Design and Dairy management. www.cowsignals.com The CowSignals Diamond: what is the weakest spot in your dairy? Does the cow get the 6 freedoms of the pasture, also offered in the barn? In the middle number seven:health. Do you see curved backs, empty rumens, wounds or infection? Look, Think, Act, do something to make your cows and yourself happy! CowSignals training center Hoekgraaf 17a 6617 AX Bergharen The Netherlands www.cowsignals.com info@cowsignals.com - + 31 (0) 487 745 041 CowSignals is a member of the Vetvice Group
HALF OF THE COWS IN EUROPE ARE DRINKING DIRT AND SHIT... You can achieve maximum water intake with good quality clean water and easy access to the drinkers. Over 85% of milk is water. The more water your cows drink, the more milk you get. Water light and air are the cheapest feed! In a survey we found that half of the farms have very poor quality shitty water. Because of not regular cleaning or because of bad systems with communicating drinkers where the low connecting pipeline is full of dirt. On this bad half of the farms they found too many bacteria, high iron, sulphate etc. The solution is again very simple: clean your Low drinker, from two sides available troughs every Monday, Wednesday and Friday after milking as a routine. Also use a brush to clean it properly, because the slimy rims are growing many bacteria. This is how the better farms assure water intake. And again, this cleaning time is paid back in litres milk COWSIGNALS: DO THEY DRINK ENOUGH WATER? Look at the coats of the cow. Shiny smooth coats is a sign of good water intake. Elastic skin is a good sign: lift up a piece of skin from the side of a cow s neck and it should pop back in place within half a second. If the wrinkle stays there after releasing it is a sign of dehydration. What are the eyes telling you? Lively and round big eyes are good signs. If eyes are sunken deep in the skull it means this cow did not drink today. If a calf looks like this you better start running to call the vet to save her life. On a farm in Scotland and some in Ireland I found heifers and weak cows with very stiff manure. This was on farms with only one big drinker for over 100 animals. One big mama is ruling the place and she likes to spend several hours Too high in front of the drinker to show everybody that she is the boss. Cows do not get enough chance to drink. There is always another cow chasing you away. The best half will still be OK, but the weakest 50% are suffering. We advise one open trough drinker per 20 cows, or a double fast drinker per 20 cows well spread over the area. 2
How do cows behave at the drinker? Are they scared? For other cows or for stray voltage? Are they looking around before drinking? Are they sniffing and not drinking? Are they passing the first drinker and walk to the next one? Are they sticking the tongue in first, to check the water temperature? Do you hear them making sucking noises: that means there is not enough water pressure or the drinker is too small. Can the cows reach the water or is the rim too high? Do they touch the rim of the drinker? We advise to have wide Easy to empty passages and put the drinkers on 60 cm high only. Many are placed at 110 cm height and you see that cows can hardly drink. Try it yourself; drink water while you push with one finger in your throat. This is not a good feeling and makes the cows drink less. HOW MANY LITRES WATER DO THEY NEED? Cows like to drink 10-15 times a day around 10 litres. In hot summers a high yielding 10.000 litre cow can drink 200 litres per day. The normal drinking speed of a cow is about 20 litres per minute so cows like to drink a minimum of 10 times a day for a half a minute. The more drinkers you put in, the better chance that your heifers will drink enough water. For a nice drink the cows like to have a water depth of at least 7 cm. They have to dip their mouth in without sucking air at the sides of their lips. Then if you talk about fast drinkers, you need a water flow of 20 litres per minute to serve the cow. That means that you need 5 atmosphere pressure, a 30 mm wide tube and a large inlet opening in the drinker. Many commercially available drinkers are useless, because engineers don t know much about cows and farmers. Check the details and test it with a big bucket: do they bring 20 litres per minute? Are they easy to clean? Do they have nice round edges, so there are no risks of wounding the cow? Are they wide enough so a cow can stand straight and drink comfortably? 3
TIP TANKS, OPEN DRINKERS WITH QUICK PLUGS, DOUBLE FAST DRINKERS They are all good systems but they all need attention. Tip tanks need to be tipped. Many farmers don t do this often enough for many bad reasons. One is they don t like to have too much water in the manure Most of the systems are difficult to clean. Shallow tanks with a slope and an easy plug are excellent because you can clean ev ery corner with a brush easily. Fast drinkers need high pressure. Then they will give your cows a fresh drink every time. The cows will drink most of the food particles stuck to their nose and Double fast drinker: Nico and Joep can drink, Jan has to wait. washed off in the water themselves during the same drink, so they stay rather clean all the time. DRINKERS IN THE MILK PARLOUR? It is better to make excellent water supply in your cow house then in your parlour where they can only use it twice a day for 15 minutes. If you have a very bad water supply in your barn, parlour drinkers can be a cheap way to improve water intake. TEMPERATURE OF THE WATER? Don t worry about the temperature. As long as it stays above zero. First make sure you have clean water. Second make sure you have enough drinkers, Thirdly: check the pressure so they will be always full. Then if you have these major 3 things assured, you can start to worry about the ideal temperature of around 17 degrees Celcius. Cows drink more in winter time when you supply warm water. Cooling water from the milk cooler can be used to water the cows. Just beware: if you don t clean the drinkers cows will only drink less water in summertime, because of rapid bacterial growth. So warm water in winter is ok, in summer it is risky. For cooling the cow in heat stress we prefer cold water. In the very open buildings that we nowadays advise with our vetvice barn design team, it is necessary to have a good winter proof water system that cannot freeze. A ring line with constant circulation does the job. For below 5 degrees Centigrade we also need a heater on the system, and electric heaters on the water tanks, or a special circulating system that leads the warmer ring line water through the open troughs. 4
SHITTING IN THE DRINKERS If you place a drinker in a narrow collecting area: shit happens. If you place it behind the eating cows in the cow lane, you see that when they back out of the row of eating cows they end up shitting in the tanks. So the position of the drinkers is critical. If you have narrow passages I prefer the double fast drinkers in every passage. The advantage is that cows drink in the same direction as the cows resting in the double row of cubicles. This leaves space open for a passing cow. Cows always like to drink when they come and go from the feeding table. So a passage without a drinker is not a good idea. Easy to clean with a brush, also around the swimmer. POSITION IN THE BARN With 60 cows and 3 passages to the feeding table we normaly put a big drinker in the front and 2 double fast drinkers in the 2 other passages. In small groups try to always give them 2 drinkers. It is good to put them on both sides of the fence so two groups can use the same drinker. Don t put any concrete blocks under the drinkers as a step stone. It is a risk for wounded legs while fighting for water or when cows are in heat. They do this to prevent cows from shitting in it. If you place drinkers in a good position and make the passages wide enough there is very little risk of shitting in the tank. WATER IMMEDIATELY AFTER CALVING After calving we advise unlimited lukewarm water to get the cow back in shape and let her eat as soon as possible. Some cows will drink 100 litre in the first hour. If you have a straw pack for a fresh cow group and precalving group which is highly recommended, than put the drinkers on the concrete cow lane area and not in the straw pack. This will always be a messy spot. Only in your calving pen will you have to put the drinker in the straw pack. This information has been provided by our colleagues at CowSignals. It has not been subject to Vetstream s peer review process. We hope you find it useful. 5