This is blind Laddie, our handsome, sweet Arabian, drinking out of his automatic waterer this afternoon. We received a grant last summer to put in these automatic waterers throughout our extensive corral system, and it has saved us an incredible amount of labor and significantly reduced our electricity consumption.
We used to provide an individual 150-gallon or 300-gallon Rubbermaid water tank in each corral, with each tank equipped with its own 1500-watt heater to prevent them from freezing in winter. Come October, when we plugged those heaters in, our power bill would jump immediately to over $1,000 a month and stay there until spring. These Ritchie automatic waterers are well-insulated, designed for cold-climate use, and take advantage of ground heat through a thermal tube to keep the water from freezing. They use only a 250-watt heater, and we found we only needed to turn them on when the temperature dropped to the single-digits. Now that's insulated!
Most of the units we installed are doubles, like the one Laddie is drinking from, so we could put one side in one corral and the other side in the adjoining corral. Because of our corral configuration, we were able to replace nine Rubbermaid tanks with six of these automatic waterers.
We ended up decreasing our energy load from 13,500 watts running full-time throughout the winter to 1,500 watts during only really cold weather. In effect, we now use as much power to heat all six of the automatic waterers as it took us to heat a single Rubbermaid tank.
It would take on average about 4 hours to clean and fill all the water tanks, usually at least twice a week, and that meant we were dragging hoses around in sub-zero weather, having to keep the water running as we went from tank to tank or the hoses would instantly freeze up. It was without a doubt the coldest, most physically uncomfortable, most time-consuming job on the ranch.
These waterers are filled through a pressure tank system, and each unit has a float valve so they always remain filled to the right level. (Yep, just like a toilet.) There's a plastic "bubble" the horses push down with their mouths and then the water comes up for them to drink. We weren't sure at first how the blind horses would do with this, since they couldn't see how it worked. But we didn't need to worry. All we had to do was walk each horse up to a waterer, push the bubble down and splash our hand in the water, and they figured it out.
Yesterday, a shut-off valve broke on the water supply line to Laddie's waterer -- a brass fitting that's never supposed to break, of course, but will on a Sunday morning! Yes, it's the shut-off valve that broke, so we had to shut down the entire system to keep Laddie's unit from flooding out. We'd turn it on periodically to refill the other waterers, and meanwhile Laddie and his pal blind Shasta had access to water buckets in their stalls. But we'd never seen so many horses interested in their automatic waterers until we had to shut them off yesterday! We'd know it was time to turn the system on briefly to refill because we could hear the horses knocking their bubbles around.
So when our contractors got Laddie's water supply line fixed this afternoon, we had some grateful horses. Here's Laddie after drinking his fill:
Well, what do you know? Apparently you *can* lead a horse to water and make him drink!
Posted by: Moon Rani | April 29, 2008 at 01:29 PM
I too am grateful for the new water tanks!! No more hauling the water hoses around!! Yahoo!!
Posted by: Laura | April 29, 2008 at 12:03 PM
Rolling Dog's going green! Glad to hear the new waterers are so energy and labor efficient! I don't know which you must like the most. Maybe it's a tie.
Posted by: Mircat | April 29, 2008 at 09:17 AM
What a "Thanx" expression :)
Posted by: Vicki | April 29, 2008 at 08:14 AM
Man, that is one content horse!
Posted by: Clay | April 29, 2008 at 08:02 AM
RDR leads the way in greening the sanctuary and saving money. And Laddie's happy pink tongue says it's truly a success. I'll bet it will keep the water cool in the summer, too.
The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald TN uses a similar technology in the field for their eles except they don't need all the insulation!!
Posted by: Janet in Cambridge | April 29, 2008 at 06:18 AM
I love that picture of Laddie. Wow, it's amazing what they developed for animals now and thank you for explaining how energy efficient these automatic waterers are for the Ranch—it’s such a WIN/WIN!!
Posted by: Shirley & James, Portland, OR | April 28, 2008 at 10:45 PM
Laddie looks quite satisfied, thank you!
And what an improvement with the watering system - greener, better, cheaper, easier!
Posted by: maggie | April 28, 2008 at 09:34 PM