Importance of Winter Water
Even though most people don’t think about water when they think about nutrition for cattle, water is actually the most important nutrient. Most animals can survive for many days without food, but only a few days without water. A cow’s body is composed of about 60% to 70% water, though this can vary depending on age, breed, and stage of production, with lactating cows having a higher water content. Water is crucial for all body functions, including digestion and transport, waste elimination, and temperature regulation. Dehydration affects the bloodstream and transport of nutrients and oxygen to body tissues.
Digestion and processing of feed is totally dependent on adequate water, and cattle have to eat more feed in cold weather to generate additional body heat. A lot of body heat can be produced by the breakdown of forages in the rumen, due to the heat of digestion/fermentation. To process the additional feed, however, the digestive tract needs adequate fluid.
A cow’s water requirement are not as high in winter as in summer when she’s losing more fluid via sweating and panting to help dissipate body heat, and needing additional fluid for lactation, but she still needs to drink enough water in cold weather to handle the demands of ruminant digestion and increased metabolism, to prevent dehydration and impaction. It is important to provide adequate water for livestock during cold weather. It’s also best if the water is good quality (not contaminated with unhealthy materials or manure) and not ice-cold or they won’t drink enough.
Julie Walker, Beef Specialist, South Dakota State University says that if cattle don’t have water, they won’t eat much, and if they don’t eat enough, they can’t stay warm. “Fermentation in the rumen generates heat and helps alleviate cold stress,” she says. “The more they eat, the more they must drink in order to process the feed. “It’s crucial to keep water sources open (not covered with ice), and make sure they have an adequate supply. We know cows can eat snow, but it can’t completely replace a good water source, and they can’t snow it if it’s crusted over. Some cows won’t eat snow.”
If you simply put a herd of cows out on winter pasture and expect them to eat snow, like sheep can, and they are not accustomed to eating snow, many are slow to learn and lose weight.
“They should always have a water source. Some cows may not come to it every day; they may choose to stay out and graze and lick snow, but it’s there when they want it. Some cows only come for water every other day or so because snow consumption provides much of what they need. Water consumption is around 6 gallons per day for pregnant dry cows at 40 degrees Fahrenheit but we don’t know how much water they actually need in these situations with snow providing part of the fluid requirement, because we can’t replicate nature in a research study. We just know that cows need adequate water (via snow or some other source) to prevent dehydration,” says Walker.
Trey Patterson, PhD (nutritionist and Chief Operations Officer of Padlock Ranches in Wyoming) says that when using snow a rancher has to make sure the cattle don’t have excessive salt intake. Many mineral or protein supplements contain salt as a limiter, and this increases the cows’ water requirement.
“When you provide supplement, make sure there’s not too much salt in it. You want cattle to have adequate salt but not excessive salt. You don’t want to do anything that would decrease their ability to use snow, yet at the same time you don’t want them deficient in salt. If they’re deficient, they won’t drink enough water or eat enough snow, and then they won’t eat enough,” he says.
There’s a close correlation between water intake and feed intake. You don’t want to artificially inflate water intake, but you need enough water or snow to maximize feed intake. “Cattle are on a low quality diet if they are out on winter range, and you want them eating as much as possible,” says Patterson. If you feed cattle it is imperative that cattle have enough fresh water for their needs.
“If cattle are used to having adequate drinking water, you could encounter some losses if they suddenly have to depend on snow. They need time to adapt to eating snow, and I don’t recommend that you make them depend completely on snow,” he says. Certain cows need access to water if they refuse to eat snow.
“We develop some of our replacement heifers on native range in the winter. I think it’s easier to merge these heifers into a combined system (snow and water) than heifers that have been in the feedlot. You can’t just kick them out on winter pastures and expect them to eat snow. They may lose a lot of condition which could have a negative effect on production,” says Patterson.
“Usually in winter your cows are dry, and their water requirements are lower than when they are lactating. If you have pairs, either fall calving, or haven’t weaned your late summer calves yet, it’s unlikely that snow would be adequate for water requirements unless they grew up in this system and snow is the right consistency to easily consume. But a dry cow in winter has lower water intake than a dry cow in summer or a lactating cow,” he says.
“One thing some people don’t realize is that when it gets really cold this doesn’t mean cows’ water requirement diminishes. In fact, it may increase because cows are eating more to try to generate more body heat. Because of the correlation between water intake and feed intake you want to make sure they have adequate water,” he explains.
Even if you are providing water in a trough, there’s still the challenge of making sure the water doesn’t freeze. You don’t want the intake and pipes to freeze up or have thick surface ice over the water that the cows can’t push through with their chins to drink. Karl Hoppe, Extension Livestock Specialist, North Dakota State University says the easiest way to keep a water pump or the water in a trough warm enough is with an electric heating element. “Some people try to use an insulated tank or trough, but when it gets down to 30 below zero or colder, they will generally be chopping ice,” he says.
Many systems work nicely in cool weather, but fail during extreme cold or prolonged cold weather. “Not only does it freeze the tank with all the water in it, but also freezes the water in the standpipe. Even if you apply heat to that pipe it may take a day or more to thaw it out.” If the pipe is plastic rather than metal, you can’t hook it up to electricity to thaw it out.
“Some people use steam—directed into the accessible end of the pipe–and others use hot air, like the exhaust from a pickup or tractor. After more than 50 years’ of experience with winter water, I think it pays to try to keep the water from freezing in the first place. I feel that electricity works best to keep a tank or fountain from freezing up when it’s really cold, and not try to rely on insulated tanks,” he says.
Not every location has access to electricity, however. There are other options for heating a waterer, such as natural gas or a propane tank and heater. The ranch where Hoppe grew up had several water tanks in areas with no electricity and his family used a propane burner with a thermostat that turned it on when weather got really cold. With a propane burner or natural gas heater, however, a strong wind may blow out the pilot light.
Coal furnaces or cob boxes are also used sometimes for heating water tanks. On a farm that grows corn, a person can use corn cobs to keep a smoldering fire going. You have to keep adding fuel to those burners, but that’s still much easier than breaking ice.
Some feed yards put in frost-free water tubs/tanks to save electricity costs but when temperatures drop to 30 below zero or colder, they freeze up. “For 10 or 11 months of the year they work fine but then you might have a couple weeks with a serious water issue, and cattle do not gain weight if they can’t drink,” Hoppe says.
Tanks can be created from large rubber tires, and sometimes these are covered and set into the ground a bit, to utilize warmth from the ground, but at 40 below, even the drinking holes freeze over unless they are covered. “A cow may flip the cover open and then it freezes open,” he says.
If there are a lot of cows drinking on a water system with a lot of volume, it keeps good flow, which helps keep water from freezing, but on really cold nights the cows don’t drink. There may not be enough flow on a float system to keep it from freezing.
Running water doesn’t freeze, so some ranchers devise a system in which the water flows continually rather than using a float. Running water must have somewhere to go, however, or it will create an ice buildup. The ice must be far enough away from the tank to not create a problem, preferable in an area fenced off from the cows. The overflow must go downhill far enough before it freezes or you’ll end up with treacherous conditions around the water tank and cows slipping and falling down.
Water that comes from a spring is usually ground temperature (50 to 55 degrees) which is warmer than river or pond water in cold weather. If there is enough flow from a spring, and it can be kept moving, spring water won’t freeze unless winter temperatures get really cold, but there will be an ice flow in the discharge/overflow from the tank.
Some ranchers simply let cattle water in a stream, river, lake or pond but most of these freeze over in winter and you must chop ice in the drinking areas. “We use dugouts here in North Dakota that collect water, and they are often 50 to 100 feet wide and up to 200 feet long. These collect runoff water during spring and summer or fill with ground water if there’s a relatively high water table,” says Hoppe. These collection ponds work, but you have to chop ice, and sometimes cows walk out and fall through and drown.
Some ranchers reduce that risk by putting temporary fence (like battery-operated hot wire) along the pond or lake to limit the cattle to just the edge where drinking holes can be chopped in the ice—and they can’t walk out onto the frozen pond/lake. Other ranchers put permanent fences around the ponds/dugouts and pump water out of them for the cattle, using solar pumps or some other system, and try to create tanks with enough insulation to keep from freezing.
“Some of the big rubber tire frost-free water tanks are covered, with only a few open spots where cattle can drink. Some are installed with a riser hole in the center, coming 8 feet up from the ground beneath them. This riser pipe is 2 or 3 feet across, to get more heat from the ground coming up,” says Hoppe.
“Some folks who use big tire tanks line the drinking holes with plastic so the wind can’t get under the top of the tank. It’s like drinking out of a big covered bucket with holes. It has a lid over the top that the cows can open up to get to the water. Sometimes those lids freeze down, however, so you need to keep checking those tanks in cold weather,” he says.
“The old automatic fountains with balls at the top worked well, but you had to set those floating balls at the right level, and in cold weather you had to go out every morning and stomp on those balls to break them loose,” he explains.
“Here in North Dakota I’ve had to thaw water tanks when the tank heater shorted out and burned out, and that wasn’t fun. Even an electric heater may sometimes fail.” It’s wise to have a backup plan when cattle need water, especially if weather might stay severely cold for several days or weeks.
It’s also good to have a way to keep water tanks clean. Cattle are messy when they drink, dropping a lot of material out of their mouths (hay, grass, etc.) into the water, and sometimes they fight around a tank or back up against it to rub and get manure in the water. “You need a way to clean out the tank, and often those big rubber tire tanks don’t have a way to clean themselves out. This is one of the reasons some of the big feed yards have gone away from those big tanks, due to the inability to clean them,” he says.
“About 45 years ago at the university we had a way to measure electricity use and were trying to see what the energy costs would be in a reduced-energy system to keep the water warm enough to keep from freezing. Back then, our water tanks didn’t have much insulation and you had to just turn up the heat to prevent freezing. Now there are plastic waters that have more insulation. Then one company came out with a system they called the jug, which had a reservoir of water inside but the cattle had to suck the water out of a small hole in the center,” says Hoppe.
Not every type of system will work in every situation. “On my own farm I have two waterers that work great for me, and I’ve recommended them to other people who have put them in and had problems. Maybe my location is enough out of the wind that the water doesn’t freeze, whereas those other places have more wind. Each person must figure out what will work in their own situation.”
In regions where extensive pastures don’t have available electricity for running a pump or tank heaters, there are several innovative options including solar-power pumps and the frost-free nose pump. George Widdifield, Ranch Manager at the Western Beef Development Centre’s Research Ranch at Lanigan, Saskatchewan says their operation utilizes a frost-free nose pump and also a solar water system.
“The solar-powered water system works off a motion detector. When cattle walk up to it, the pump starts running and they can drink from it. It runs for a short time and shuts off after they move away. This system runs the pump off a wet well that we put in from a dugout. The pump is down in that shallow well and doesn’t have to pump the water very far,” says Widdifield.
This systerm has a 3-foot cribbing that goes down into the wet well, with a tub at the top that the water pumps into. “Once the pump shuts off, after the cow leaves, the water in that little tub drains back down into the wet well, so there is none left in the tub to freeze. We’ve never had any ice buildup in it because it’s a black tub that holds heat from the sun,” he says.
The ranch also uses another system that runs a pump with solar power from a regular ground well. “We run that water in an underground pipe about a quarter mile to a winterized trough that works off a float system. We put in a trough that has 6 drinking holes and you can cover or open as many as needed, depending on how many cows are watering from it. We’ve had very little trouble with this system,” he says.
“Running from a well, the water line to the trough has to be about 8 feet underground so it won’t freeze. The trough itself has about 6 inches of insulation. As long as there is fresh water coming into it all the time it doesn’t freeze. The drinking holes go down through the insulated cover.”
Cattle drinking throughout the day lower the water level to activate the float valve and bring more water into the trough, usually keep it from freezing. Occasionally those holes freeze over at night when the cattle aren’t drinking much. “If it’s 40 below zero and the wind is blowing, we may have to go out in the morning and knock the ice out of the drinking tubes, but as long as there is fresh water coming into it regularly the trough won’t freeze up. When cattle drink it down to a certain level the float activates the switch and water flows in. Once it gets full the switch kicks out and water stops coming in.”
The ranch has many small groups of cattle because of various research trials and different pens of cattle or pastures of cattle on grazing trials, so they depend on numerous water sources. “We have several different systems and also made some of our own insulated troughs because we have to haul water to different fields for the trials. As long as you put fresh water into them every day, they stay open a long time in cold weather. The insulation makes a big difference,” says Widdifield.
The ranch also has nose pumps. These consist of a vertical culvert set down into the ground to access water from a nearby dugout via an underground pipe from the bottom of the dugout to the wet well at the bottom of the upright culvert. A small drinking basin sits atop the culvert. A smaller pipe with a piston pump is inside the culvert, pumping water up to the basin when the cows push a lever with their nose. When the cow stops pumping, any water remaining in the upright pipe drains back down and there’s no water left in the pipe to freeze.
“These work fine if you train cows to use it. We did it the suggested way, starting with just a few cows at a time, and they teach the others. There are different levels in the drain holes in the line, and when we are first training the cows we put it at the highest level (during warm weather with no danger of water freezing in the pipe) so it’s easy for them to pump it. After they learn, we lower the drain hole. After they know how to use it they will push it as hard as necessary to pump the water,” says Widdifield.
“Even in summer when there is other water available there are some cows that prefer to go pump that thing and have cool, clean water. It’s nice to have cattle fenced away from the dugouts, watering with the nose pump or solar powered wet well, because they aren’t tromping in the dugout, damaging the banks, or contaminating the water. They aren’t getting footrot or spreading fecal-borne diseases. “If you can have your water source a little farther from your dugout you can keep the water cleaner,” he says.
“With any of these systems you still have to check them regularly in winter and make sure they are working and free of ice. With the solar-powered systems you have to make sure the batteries stay good or the valve switch in the tank doesn’t get knocked off kilter, or the nose pump doesn’t build up ice on the push lever,” he says.
“What I like about all of these systems is that you don’t have to worry about cattle walking out on a dugout and falling through the ice. If you get a bunch of cows pushing and shoving each other out on the ice, they may fall through. Every year you hear about somebody losing cattle.”
By Heather Smith Thomas
December 2025
For Dairy Industry News
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