Water is the most important “nutrient” for sheep as it is for all livestock and people alike!
A lot of factors affect how much water sheep drink including their age, size, the water temperature and the moisture content of the sheep’s feed. If sheep are consuming wet grass or feeds like silage they won’t drink as much water as their is water content in their food. If however, they are being fed dry hay or dry grass their requirement for water will increase.
Sheep won’t drink enough water if the water supply offered is dirty, if they don’t drink enough good quality water their health will suffer and their feed intake will drop on account of insufficient water.
Sheep don’t like dirty water!
Pregnant Ewes
When a ewe is pregnant it’s water requirement increases by the third month of gestation, pregnant ewes water intake doubles by the fifth month of gestation and even more if they are carrying twins.
If ewes are not given substantial water whilst in lamb they are exposed to severe health risks as they will also bypass an adequate intake of food to balance the lack of water. This exposes the pregnant ewes to malnutrition, unthriftiness and even pregnancy disease especially to twin-bearing ewes. Lactating ewes require double the intake of water as non-lactating ewes.
Health
It is crucial to a Sheep’s health to have an adequate supply of clean water available to them at all times. If there isn’t fresh, clean water available sheep will eat less and production will drop. This imbalance caused by insufficient clean water will leave sheep open to digestive and metabolic issues.
Coccidiosis
Coccidiosis is a common issue affecting both sheep and goats and is caused by faeces contaminating the water supply. It is also common when sheep are under stress, such as:
- When a sheep is weaned or separated from it’s lambs, or goats separated from its kids.
- Keeping too many sheep or goats together
- Keeping sheep or goats in a dirty or wet pens
- A change in feed
- Moving sheep or lambs to a new location or change of environment
Coccidiosis is a costly disease that can cause death in sheep and goats, it’s also costly from loss in production and high costs of treatments. Coccidiosis is more common in younger animals and lambs, especially between two to eight weeks old and two to three weeks after weaning from their mother.
Water Quality
If there is a limited supply of water sheep will eat less as they need to balance their water and forage intake. If the water quality is bad due to not being treated and containing harmful contaminants or tastes bad which can be common in chlorinated water, sheep will cut down their water intake. This will effect their meat yields and increase the prevalence of disease.
Agrismart uses a chlorine dioxide water treatment which is both more effective than other disinfectants at lower concentrations and doesn’t leave the bad taste and odour that chlorine-based disinfectants do.
Warm Weather
Sheep can drink up to twelve times the amount of water in warm weather than they do in colder weather. It is crucial to ensure that sheep have an adequate supply of fresh, clean water throughout warmer weather whether it is summer or not.
An inadequate supply or quality of water will prevent sheep from excreting excess toxic substances such as oxalates, ammonia, and mineral salts.
Water Requirement
- Adult animals drink around 1-2 gallons of water daily
- Ewes that are lactating drink around 2-3 gallons of water daily
- Feeder lambs drink around 1-2 gallons of water daily
- Baby lambs 0.1 – 0.3 gallon of water daily
- Sheep Registration
- Sheep Tagging
Agrismart helps farmers cut costs, improve profitability and productivity.
We provide complete agricultural water solutions tailored to your needs, we’ll ensure you have the cheapest solution available for your farms unique requirements.
Our aim is to identify high water users in livestock farming and present them with a solution that costs less than their annual water bill.
Providing free water for their business with an ROI in under 24 months.
Water Management Specialists
Agrismart offer a complete water management solution tailored to your unique requirements. Our water management specialists offer a no obligation site survey to establish the best solution for your farm.
Zero Energy Pumps – If you have a water supply on the farm it may be possible to offer a zero energy pumping system to eliminate or minimise the need for a mains water supply.
Rainwater harvesting – With an integrated pump system is another option available for those without a water source on their farm. Recycling rainwater that falls on your barns and outbuildings.
Water Treatment – Clean water is essential for disease prevention and for better meat production and breeding. Bacterial infection can build up in your water tanks and troughs and without filtration to purify the water supply your animals are at risk of disease or at least loss of condition.
Stormwater Management – We have a range of stormwater management solutions adapted to your needs to reliably remove harmful pollutants from stormwater runoff.
Water Storage – We have a Water storage tank sale on 20,000 litre water tanks – 30,000 litre water tanks, huge savings available.
Heavy Duty Bladder Tanks – Industrial grade bladder tanks now available which are a cheaper alternative to the MDPE vertical water tanks.
Effluent Storage Tanks – Bladder tanks are industry approved as an economical, effective & reliable effluent storage management solution for dairy farms.
Fire Prevention & Control – On-farm water supply that can be used by fire engines is critical in fire prevention and control, to minimise the fire spreading and damage that can cause.
Farming Solutions
Agrismart offers a comprehensive range of products chosen specifically to resolve modern day farming issues at a lower cost than currently available. All our farming solutions are designed to offer smarter farm management solutions, allowing farmers to address core farming issues and take back some control in an industry that’s so reliant on the unpredictability of nature, disease and weather.
Other Farming Solutions
Health
Monitoring temperature in cattle is an effective way of preventing illness as early warning allows treatment before illness appears.
Traceability
Agrismart currently have Livestock ID, equipment ID and security tags in production!
Genetics
Dairy & Beef Sires. We offer semen that will match your specific breeding requirements and that suit your individual farming systems – helping you to plan for profitability.