How much water does a Dexter drink?

[debra wiltshire]

We have been presented with a large water bill from our landlord. So we can establish if it is reasonable or not, I need to calculate how much dexters drink. I appreciate it will vary with a. how much dry matter they eat, lactating or not, winter or summer etc. but if anyone can point me the the right direction as to where I can find this information, I would be grateful.

[SteveM]

had cattle grazing a 10 acre field last year from early may to snow in november, concrete water trough drained 3-4 times to clean out, newly fitted meter showed 28.8 cubic metres when the came away.

Started with 4, increased to 8 through summer, then down to 4 when steers went to butchers end of october, so average 5-6 animals accross the six and a half months.

[Broomcroft]

I have 6 full grown heifers in a barn on haylage. If I turn the water off, they will empty the tank that measures 5' x 2' x 18" (roughly) in one day. In really hot weather out in the fields, I reckon you could double or triple that. In freezing cold weather, halve it, something like that???

[SteveM]

doing daily meter readings on 10 dexters, should have an average at weekend

[SteveM]

Ten dexters on ten acre field, 2 mature cows, 18 month old heifer & steer, six 8-12 month old steers, averaging 100 litres per day over last ten days.

Has had one heavy shower, and misty dew a couple of mornings.

[Broomcroft]

What's that in cubic metres?

[SteveM]

100 litres is 0.1 cubic meters, so on current figures the 10 cattle are drinking 1 cubic meter in 10 days.

[M Blake]

Debra,
My business is providing private borehole water supplies predominantly for farms in Cornwall and Devon. We use 20 gallons per day or 90 litres for a typical dairy unit per head, this allows followers. This figure is pretty accurate. I would personally expect a mature dexter to use around 6-8 gallons per day.
What is your bills quantity and for what period? Last winter was hard and we have experienced a lot of customers using more water due to leaks. Even a small leak over a period can add up.
Hope this is of some help.
Mark

[Broomcroft]

100 litres is 0.1 cubic meters, so on current figures the 10 cattle are drinking 1 cubic meter in 10 days.

Thanks, I'm not very metric! As a comparison, I've got 60 fully grown cattle + 20 yearlings out at the moment, so effectively 80 cattle, plus 280 ewes.

My fields are on a separate meter, and this lot are using 1.3 cu.mtrs a day on average, or 1,300 litres.

The ewes don't drink very much at all, so say maybe 200 litres of that is sheep at a guess.

So your lot Steve are drinking 10 litres a day each, and mine are drinking 14 (in this quite hot weather).

So 10-15 litres per day per Dexter, sounds about right. More in the high summer obviously.

But inside on hay/haylage, mine would drink more but I don't have a figure. Same with sheep, if they're on hay, they go from drinking almost nothing to a lot.

Mark - Dairy cows will eat about 5+ times as much as a Dexter according to my dairy pals, so I assume their water intake is equally as large by comparison? I was surprised when I heard this and it made me wonder whether they produce 5 times as much milk. From figure I can recall, I don't think they do.

[Anna]

10 litres a day? Noo, that is too little. A dexter may milk 10 litres a day, obviously she needs more water than that. Did you mean 10 gallons?

My dexter cow in milk plus a steer plus a heifer drink about 100 litres a day I think. So on average that would be approximately 10 gallons each.

[SteveM]

10 litres average each per day is correct, only 2 cows are incalf due in a couple of months, rest are steers or heifers for beef.

Grass is growing well, was topped and harrowed 3 weeks ago, with morning mist making it wet in a morning so would assume moisture content will be quite high.

Will hopefully keep a record throughout grazing season to see how things change as summer comes.

Would agree housed on hay/silage/straw in winter the few we water with a bucket will use two or three 2 gallon buckets a day.

[Broomcroft]

It was the hottest day of the year yesterday here and I looked at our water meter. It was whizzing round all day, no leaks, I checked. I reckon water usage was up 50% yesterday. I'll take more readings over a longer periods in the hot weather.

[bjreroberts]

Same here I had to fill up all the water containers yesterday and normally they would not have needed doing until today or tomorrow morning.

[debra wiltshire]

Thank you all for the information. It is a very delicate matter as we do not want to upset our landlord but we have been charged for 163 cubic meters for the period of Jul - Dec 10. For on average 6 dexters at any given time. At least we have more of an idea so we will try to work it out this weekend.

[Broomcroft]

I work that out to 148 litres per day each. Divide by ten to get the right figure unless you've got a leak. As Mark said, a leak can use a tremendous amount of water. An average hose running would use maybe 12,000 litres in a day. And even a good drip uses a surprising amount.

Hope I got my maths right?