NEW HAMPTON, Iowa–For less than $900, Mike Reicherts built a mobile waterer and mineral feeder for his 72 stockers. "I wanted a simple, portable system that can handle a lot of animals without having to refill it very often," he says. "You can't buy one. So I built one myself."
Reicherts views the low-cost tool as a temporary solution for getting water to all his paddocks. "Our grazing system is still in transition," he explains. "I don't want to bury water pipe until I know where I want everything to go."
The foundation of Reicherts' waterer is an old running gear (probably worth less than $50, he says) and a 1,200-gallon polytank (about $400 new, but considerably less at farm sales). The tank and gear are actually on loan from neighbor, and fellow grazier Tom Frantzen, who used them to fill remote stock tanks before installing his own permanent below-ground water system.
Reicherts bent 4 by 8-foot sheets of galvanized sheet metal to form the bottom and long sides of the troughs. Then he welded on the ends and reinforced the top edges with scrap, three-fourths-inch pipe. He estimates materials cost about $100 per trough. The gravity-fed water reaches each trough through plastic tubing connected to l-inch KGS Midi Flow valves. (Cost: About $35 each. Kentucky Graziers Supply, 1929 South Main St., Paris KY 40361, (800) 729-0592.)
Reicherts fashioned an angle-iron bracket to carry a Pride of the Farm three-compartment mineral feeder. (Feeder cost: About
$100. Hawkeye Steel Products Inc., P.0. Box
2000, Houghton IA 52631, (800) 553-1791.) He fills each compartment
with a different mix–One high in calcium, one high in phosphorus
and one high in magnesium–and lets the stockers balance their
own mineral intake. The feeder is the most weatherproof one he
could find, and cattle quickly learn how to use it, he adds.Rather than hauling the waterer back to the farmstead, Reicherts recharges it from a 500-gallon nurse tank–usually just every other day, but daily during hot weather. He places the waterer where he wants to concentrate manure and hoof action. For example, if I have a thistle infestation, I'll park it right there. High animal impact increases plant diversity, and hopefully will push succession forward to more desirable species," he explains.
Even after he installs a permanent water system, Reicherts or his neighbor will keep the portable one handy for times when they move animals to remote fields. "This is one of those tools that increases our flexibility and gives us more options," says Reicherts.