Drinking water must be tasty, clear, odourless and colourless. In fact, as a stockbreeder, you must be willing to drink the water yourself, in that way it can be seen that the drinking water is truly of optimal quality. 

Water is often a forgotten “raw material” in livestock raising. It must be available at all times and it must be of good quality, since low-quality water can quickly lead to all kinds of problems, resulting in a lowering of the technical results.

The best practice is therefore to check the drinking water annually. In so doing, it is important that samples be taken both at the source and at the drinking places. Different analytical results are often observed because a lot of water decays along the way due to unclean automatic drinkers, an excessively high ambient temperature, an excessively low flow rate, all kinds of additives and residues, too many unnecessary bends, dead-end pieces, etc.

Even out in the field it is easy to determine whether the quality is too poor. All you have to do is fill a clear bottle with water at a drinking place. If, after shaking, no flakes can be seen and if, after four hours, the water does not smell, then the chances are already very good that the water is suitable as drinking water.

Drinking water in cattle raising

An inadequate water quality can lead to a poorly functioning metabolism. With cattle contamination in the drinking troughs is often observed. This is expressed in an increased number of germs and coliforms.

Gert-Jan Gerrits, Commercial and Technical Director of Cehave-Korm,Ukraine

 To read more you can in the magazine publication "Milk and Farm", №5, June 2011