Hi all!
So, I've been thinking about getting cattle for 5+ years. We have a family history of Dexters.
Life events have put that on the backburner the last few years, but I'd really like to get going next year. Having only about 3.25 acres of grazing available, my plan would be to start with a cow, calf and steer in a rotational system. Basically, I want a steer a year in the freezer, so add a Dexter steer in the years that the cow gives me a heifer calf. That should work with the amount of pasture growth we have here.
The one issue I need to figure out is how best to do water out in the pasture. Our primary well water is at the house. We have a second drilled well up at the barn, but it hasn't been working in 20+ years. Would need to get all the electrical sorted out, new pump and plumbing, and deal with the fact that it's in an unheated barn during the winter and still a long way from the pasture. Our third option is a dug well in the old turnaround circle in front of the old barn's milkhouse.
Fix the barn well
Probably the best long-term solution. Would require new electrical, pump and plumbing. In addition, would need to rebuild the pump room to be insulated and relatively airtight as it would need to be heated all winter. and probably my best option for winter water anyways. However, this is probably the most time, effort and funds-intensive options I can think of, and requires me to invest in a barn that I may someday be tearing down (don't want to, but probably need to invest $30k-$50k to get it weather-tight again, possibly a $50k roof on top of that, not to mention fixing all the rot that's set in from 30-40 years of low / no maintenance - for a building that I don't use most of due to it's awkward configuration.
Water trailer
My next idea is to purchase an IBC tote or other water tank with an opaque cover and put it on a trailer where it sits up high. I can pull it to the house with my tractor to fill it, then park it in the field, attach field lines and use it to gravity-feed a hose out to wherever I have the pasture water that day.
Here's the problems with that idea:
1. Still have to invest a lot of time and money into building / buying a trailer for this.
2. This plan breaks down when the ground is too wet to pull a heavily loaded water trailer.
3. Doesn't really provide a good winter solution.
Wind Power
A second option - I have an old dug well nearby with the water down between 6 and 12 feet, depending on the time of year. I don't have power to the well, and bringing power would require breaking a bunch of old concrete. I could potentially add a windmill pump and a tank, and gravity feed the pasture, but I'd need a big tank up fairly high to have enough of a pressure head to feed out to the pasture. Option B would be to run the outfeed from the wind pump directly to the trough in the pasture, but that may not be too dependable. I think I need a tank buffer to carry through those periodic no-wind summer days.
Problems:
1. The well is in the middle of the turnaround circle of our driveway, under a nice mature Red Maple that would have to come down if I built a windmill.
2. Not sure how much tank buffer capacity I would need to reasonably have.
3. I'm not sure my wife would be a big fan of having all the water infrastructure front and center on our property
4. Still doesn't give me a good winter solution.
Does anyone have any other thoughts or ideas about how to reasonably and cheaply develop a water solution?