Watering Cows with a solar waterer

We don't keep our cows up in our yard for the winter as exercise makes for healthier cows. The problem with this is they need water when they are out in the field. We solved this problem some 10 or 15 years ago by building a solar water that works all year round. Our local county had a field tour to some other farms in the area. One of these farms had a system similar to this ours. We took these ideas and build our own system. Back then there was hardly any of these systems around and the commercial systems were few and far between and not yet very refined. This system will water cows at 40 below with no problem, and has been very reliable, although when we first built it we had to get all the kinks out of it. So far we have only had it give trouble once this year when the switch on the door became misaligned. Some years during the shortest days of the year we run short of power because of cloudy days, but this year has been very good.
The system consists of an old kitchen sink mounted on top of a 24" culvert standing vertical in about 3 1/2 meters of ground, down below frost level. The culvert is insulated with Styrofoam to keep the water reservoir in the bottom from freezing. The water comes from a dugout located about 7 meters away. The reservoir is kept full by a horizontal pipe buried below the frost line from the dug-out to the culvert.
For the cows to drink they push their nose on the door above the sink which in turn moves a switch that turns on a small pump located in the bottom of the culvert. The water is then pumped up to the drain in the sink where the cowthen drinks to her hearts content. When she is finished drinking she backs away from the sink, the door falls closed, moving the switch which shuts off the pump. When the pumps shuts off, the water then drains from the sink back below the frost line in the same pipe it came up.
With a system such as this we are able to completely fence our dug-outs to keeps the cows out which allows for a healthy riparian area for the wild animals and birds. A healthy riparian area keeps the water quality much better.

Feeding Cows

One of the daily rituals on the farm is feeding our herd of 125 cows. Pictured to the right is our cows on Boxing day (Dec 26). I actually took a picture on Christmas morning but it didn't turn out as it was still too dark in the morning when I took the picture. Each day we either take out 3 bales of hay or pea straw or a load of silage, depending on how cold it is out, and what the cows requirements are. As you can see we have lots of snow on the ground now. Our cows get lots of exercise the days walking through the snow, this keeps them in good shape in the winter so they are ready for calving season. It seems that cows that have had lots of exercise have less problems at calving season. Usually our son-in-law Randy does the feeding but I volunteered for a couple of days so he could be with his family for Christmas.

Getting ready for Christmas

Yesterday afternoon we went for our Christmas tree. We went over to Elna's mothers place for our tree. She lives about 6 miles from home and has lots of spruce trees in her pasture. This is one of the pastures that we keep our cows at in the summer. There was lots of snow in the pasture this year, so Randy took the tractor over to plow snow ahead of the truck. Keri, Elna. Megan, Makayla and I went over in the truck.

After we got our trees home we loaded up the grand kids and went to our local Church for their annual Christmas craft evening with supper and then making ginger bread houses, lots of other crafts, and even a scavenger hunt to end the evening.

Terra Madre Day

To celebrate Terra Madre Day Elna has been working hard to prepare a feast with locally grown food. She has been busy trying to perfect her recipes so she could get every thing just right. Just a few of the local suppliers were Eagle Creek Garlic and Potatoes, Chinook Honey and Meadery, Hamilton's barley flour, Nixon's Honey, Beck Farms Vegetables, Sylvan Star Cheese, Flavour of the Foothills BBQ sauce, Highwood Crossing wheat flour, HolmeHus Eggs, and of course Edgar Farms.


We had our good friends Stan and Liz over, along with their son John Mills who went to Tara Madre last year. Our son in law Randy was quite disappointed that he had to miss this meal as he stayed home with a sick daughter although Keri and our grandaughter did get to enjoy the evening. John was a bit late getting here as he had gone to Calgary with a truck load of Innisfail Growers produce to the market. Pictured here is a picture of him sampling his home grown garlic that Elna slow roasted and placed on her home made crackers . Also John's friend Rayell missed out because of other commitments. All in all it was a great feast and was enjoyed by all.

Preg. Checking our Cows

Yesterday we had our local veterinarian out to the farm for our cows annual check-up. He checks each cow to see if she is in calf, and for any other health issues. It was minus 21 degrees Celsius at 8:00 AM when we started with the cows so we had lots of clothes on. We ran 125 cows through the chute. If you look behind us we even had our patio heater set up to provide a little heat right by the chute, but the best way to keep warm was just to keep moving.