Knowledge Bank

Water is an essential nutrient across animal species, and livestock species must maintain hydration to promote their health and productivity. Water consumption, however, is influenced by many factors, and producers must practically control as many factors as possible in order to encourage livestock's water consumption. Encouraging water consumption begins with the waterer itself, and there are waterer factors that producers have complete control over. The objective of these experiments was to investigate two factors of the waterer that producers can control: color of waterers and how frequently waterers are cleaned. I hypothesized that the sheep would prefer the blue waterer in the color trials and the waterer cleaned daily in the cleaning frequency trails. Three waterers (flat-backed, 5-gallon stock buckets) per pen of sheep (n = 4) were utilized for both procedures. Waterer weights were recorded every 12 hours to determine the amount of water consumed. For color preference, a yellow, blue, and black waterer were all placed in each pen. For cleaning frequency preference, three waterers of identical color were placed in each pen. Different cleaning schedules were implemented on each waterer (Waterer 1: once daily; Waterer 2: once every fourth day; Waterer 3: once every seventh day). When designated to be cleaned, the waterer was emptied, removed of debris using a scrub brush, refilled, and returned to pens. Waterers were refilled every 12 hours regardless of cleaning. Analysis for color accounted for fixed effect of color and random effects of pen, bucket position, and time (AM/PM). The consumed twice as much water (P = 0.02) from blue or yellow waterers (1.327 L/head/day, 1.535 L/head/day) compared to the black waterer (0.790 L/head/day). Analysis for cleaning frequency preference accounted for fixed effects of day, treatment, treatment × day interaction and random effects of pen, week, position, and time (AM vs PM), with a repeated effect of day. Sheep preferred (P < 0.0001) the waterer that was cleaned once per day (2.680 L/head/day) compared to waterers cleaned every seventh day (0.795 L/head/day). Sheep did not find waterers cleaned every fourth day (1.393 L/head/day) less preferable than waterers cleaned daily (2.680 L/head/day) nor more preferable than waterers cleaned every seventh day (0.795 L/head/day, P > 0.10). These results suggest that sheep consume more water from colored waterers and from waterers that are cleaned more frequently, and producers should utilize waterer colors such as yellow or blue and clean their waterers every 1 to 4 days.