Providing livestock water using 'bust-proof' pipe
By Wayne Burleson

I just completed building two livestock water developments on a ranch here in Montana. This was my first chance to personally test some of these unique livestock watering ideas that I have been packing around and explaining in our workshops for the past several years.

During our springtime pasture management workshop, we always demonstrate a movable, above-ground pasture watering system. I ordered this heavy duty polyethylene watering kit out of Kentucky Graziers Supply web site: http://www.kygraziers.com. They carry: Pasture Pipe™, Quik Couplers, mini tanks, starter kits, trough valves, fittings, etc.

ALSO try http://kencove.com/add.htm#4.

We have tried to break pieces of this water pipe at each workshop. You just about can't do it, even when someone took a swing at the plastic pipe still full of frozen water with a sledgehammer. The plastic bends and pushes flat, but will not crack.

I came up with a nifty way to demonstrate how tough this "bust proof" pipe is by hooking up a 100-foot section, placing water pressure in the pipe, locating a section of the pipe on a big rock and then parking the wheel of a 3/4 ton pickup truck right smack dab on top of the water pipe. No problem, the water keeps moving under the wheel.

Next, I usually call for the youngest person (a good job for my grand-kids) to show the big burly ranchers that even a very small person can move livestock water around. The kids would fill a 15-gallon rubber water trough and then move the water trough from one location to another. They would dump the water out, unhook a python valve (similar to a sprinkler head), drag the watering trough to a new location, pop the feeder line into another python valve and, presto, the tank would fill up again.

Petty cool! I would then challenge these ranchers by saying, "Why not take this "bust proof", above-ground water pipe, save all the expense of burying the pipe, and run it along a fence line to some hard-to-water areas in your pastures?" (The pipe comes in very long rolls.)

Instead of just talking and demonstrating this idea, I recently installed a water development on a steep hillside using this above-ground water pipe. After locating a very small spring, dripping right out of a rocky cliff, I drilled holes in the end of a 1.5
inch section of a "bust proof"  pipe about 12 feet in length. I dug a shallow trench just below this water seep and added about two inches of bentonite (clay) soil to the downward side of the dug trench and on the bottom.

You can hand-place the bentonite in the bottom of the trench and pack it in with your hand. Next, I laid the pipe with the 1/4" holes drilled in it in the trench. I covered the pipe with washed gravel and buried the pipe. There was a gurgling sound as the
pipe picked up the water and, sure enough, it started to run out the end of the pipe I had down the hill. Yahoo! It worked!

I installed the water tank so that the inflow pipe came up over the side wall of the tank. The outflow pipe is installed in the bottom side of the tank, with two elbows near the surface of the water. The purpose of the elbows is to suck water from below the water surface to help prevent plugging from floating debris. I learned back in my old Forest Service days to also install a block of wood connected to a wire mesh, hooked to the side wall of the tank, to assist small birds and mice from drowning in the water tank.

One extra tip on using the water system on a steep hillside is to install a six-inch section of radiator hose on the outflow fitting.  This will prevent the fitting from breaking as the water tank settles into the hillside. Be sure to post down the water tank so that it won't move. If you also place wooden posts next to the fittings in the top of the tank, you will protect them from damage and moving around from animals drinking, bumping or playing with the plastic pipe.

The continuous flow of water will keep the water from freezing during most cold weather (still to be tested). The beauty of this water system is I can simply hook up another water pipe to the outflow pipe and go down the hill and install another water tank. You could install several water tanks across one pasture this way without the expense of burying the pipe.

I also installed another water trough that is guaranteed not to freeze. We found a year-a-round spring, flowing 12 gallons of ice-cold water into a dry creek bed. I poured a cement dam about six inches wide, two feet tall and eight feet long - to raise the water level causing it to flow out of a short piece of "bust proof" pipe. 

I then made a wooden box frame and poured it full of mortar-fill cement and formed a short cement water trough that sits right next to the creek bottom. This very heavy water trough looks like a big bird feeder - only oblong.

There are 12 gallons per minute of water coming right out of a one-foot pipe shooting into this cement water trough and there is no way the water tank should freeze up. I also  insulated the top portion of the spring with Styrofoam and redwood. 

For protection from possible stream flooding, I also installed an extra two-inch valve down low in the cement dam to clean out dirt and debris from the bottom of the spring area.

All these ideas might not be foolproof, but using this "bust poof" water pipe has the potential to save you money and place water in those far reaches of hard-to-graze pastures. Let me know if you have any war stories using this kind of water pipe.