I don’t think anyone realises how much water livestock need, that is until water supply stops and you resort to manually carting water to them. This is the position I found myself in recently after a neighbour’s garage fire melted the pipe supplying my ewes’ water trough underground. The process of filling drums of water then re-laying new pipe and connecting water troughs, gave me plenty time to contemplate the importance of water for livestock.

As a nutritionist, I spend a lot of time fretting the smallest details in a ration. Is the protein, right? Is the starch too high? Is there enough effective fibre? But the reality is, if we look after the rumen bugs, they will do much of the work for us.

Water is often the forgotten nutrient. Newborn lambs and calves are around 80% water, falling to about 50% in adult animals. Water is involved in virtually every body function, from digestion and nutrient transport to temperature regulation. This is particularly important in ruminants, where the activity of the rumen microbes generates a considerable amount of heat.

If an animal cannot access enough water or must work hard to drink, feed intake and ultimately performance will suffer. When watching livestock drink, I like to see them able to put their nose into the trough and slurp up as much water as they want, as quickly as they want. Any system that restricts this will potentially be limiting their performance.

The quantity of water needed by animals varies drastically, depending on age, ambient temperature, physical activity, diet type and stage of production. For example, an in-lamb ewe needs around 5 litres of water a day, while this doubles once she lambs and is in milk. Finishing cattle need around 15 litres of water per 100kg bodyweight, meaning a 500kg bullock will need more than 75 litres of water each day. Multiply that across a group of cattle or sheep and suddenly the scale becomes obvious. We are potentially talking about hundreds, or even thousands, of litres of water being consumed every day.

Water isn’t necessarily just water either.

Over my time at Harbro, I’ve carried out several mineral analyses of livestock water and have been surprised by the variation in mineral levels between different sources. Water quality can be an important part of the overall mineral and nutritional picture, particularly where there are known issues with water hardness, sulphates, iron or other minerals. Conditions such as urinary calculi (gravel), typically seen in lambs on hard feed, can be down to type and quantity of available water.

Cleanliness is also often overlooked. A trough might technically be full, but if it contains a layer of algae slime, dung, old feed or is just generally mucky, it isn’t providing the same quality of drinking water we would expect for ourselves. Regularly cleaning troughs and checking water systems should be a basic part of livestock management, particularly in intensive systems where stock are eating dry cereal diets or during warm weather when water demand increases. My rule is, if you wouldn’t drink it yourself, don’t expect your stock to!

There is plenty of evidence showing the importance of unrestricted access to clean, palatable water in dairy cows, with increased water intake associated with improved milk production of 1-2 litres per cow per day. For beef cattle and sheep, the principle is exactly the same: water is fundamental to feed intake, health and performance.

While we can spend hours analysing rations and fine-tuning diets, perhaps it is worth taking a step back and checking one of the most basic things first.

So, I’ll leave you with one final question; when was the last time you cleaned out your water troughs?