Water delivery was the biggest cost associated with setting up this cell grazing system.
There is published data stating that cattle drinking clean water out of troughs compared to cattle drinking water out of dams performed up to 20% better in weight gains.
The problem being was the build up of undesirable animal urine and dung around the
edges of the dams and so eventually the dam becomes polluted. Cattle will still drink from the dambut will not consume the necessary amount of water there for reducing animal performance.
Our floodplains have numerous dams spread across them and would have supplied sufficient water for the cell grazing operation but we too realised how rank the water looked towards the middle to end of the dry season. So we opted to do the job properly and install a trough in every paddock within the cell.
Water delivery of 2 to 2.5 litres per second was the benchmark required to adequately drink 2000 plus head from one trough. I gave the job to “Southern Cross” to design the best layout in the paddock and to also supply the correct pump system to pressurize the pipe to achieve the 2 litres per second.
