If you want healthier cows that eat more and produce more milk, there’s a fairly simple trick to help – make sure they have access to clean water, according to veterinarian David Reid.
Reid, a dairy consultant from Hazel Green, Wis., shared his thoughts on water on a recent episode of The Dairy Podcast Show. He said his years working as a milk quality and udder health consultant taught him a lot about the importance of water for cow health.
“Most of what I know about milking cows, I learned in 30-60-cow tie stall barns in southwest Wisconsin,” Reid shared. “We would have these water bowls with small-diameter hoses and rusty pipes. So, we would change those out to 2-inch water lines around the barn, put ¾-inch hoses on the drinkers, and then start cleaning the drinkers every day. The dairies we did that on went up in milk, usually 2-3 pounds per cow per day.”
Since then, Reid has visited and consulted with dairies of all sizes and around the world. He said it doesn’t matter if a dairy is milking 100 cows or 10,000 – water makes a difference either way. “It’s an important part of creating a really healthy rumen means you have a healthier immune system, which is going to help with milk quality, mastitis control, and all the other things we see in dairy production medicine.”
Following are some additional take-away lessons from his experiences:
- Stay keen on clean – Simply making water available is not enough. “When I walk through dairies and run my hand through the trough and it smells like sewage, that’s not high-quality water,” Reid declared. He advises dairies to set up regular waterer cleaning schedules, and work with their chemical suppliers for systems that routinely sanitize water with products containing chlorine dioxide or peroxide. That will make the water more sanitary and the waterers easier to clean, especially if the farm’s water has high iron content.
- A lactating cow is a thirsty cow – Milk is 87% water, and cows need a lot of it. Reid explained that during the milking process, the hormone prolactin is released, which triggers thirst. He said it is ideal if cows can have fresh water available in the return alley as they exit the parlor.
- Cows prefer warm water – It’s been proven in both research and practice that cows will drink more readily when water is warmer. Reid advocates systems that utilize discharge water from cooling milk because it conserves water, and it also is warmer. He also pointed out that in cold weather, cows will likely prefer a waterer near the pen entry, because in more distant waterers, it will be colder.
- Transition-period cleanliness is critical – Reid said the most dramatic impact of keeping waterers meticulously clean is in the pre- and post-fresh pen. “We know we will have a drop in dry-matter intake around calving, but if we have a very functional rumen with good water going through it, we’re going to have better appetites and less feed drops, which will result in improved overall health,” he state.
- Construct with water in mind – When planning new facilities or evaluating existing ones, water should not be an afterthought. Reid recommends 4-5 linear inches of drinking space per cow, which should be accomplished via at least 2 water sources per pen. And supply capacity needs to be adequate to keep up with demand. “At a 10-foot long waterer, you can get 6-7 cows drinking at the same time,” he noted. “If you see very little water in them, you’ve got a problem.”
Reid said in today’s metrics-driven dairy management systems, he would love to see water meters installed in every pen of cows. That way, correlations could easily be made between cleaning schedules, water intake, and dry-matter intake.
Finally, Reid shared that he had a client who was so fastidious about water quality that he scrubbed the water bowls in his tie-stall barn daily. “You could go there on an emergency call on Christmas morning, and the waters would be clean,” he stated. “He would tell me, ‘It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done to get an extra 3 pounds of milk per cow per day.’”
