Sheep and cattle farmers in the Australian outback face the persistent challenge of keeping their stock hydrated with plentiful, quality water. Sometimes the task seems daunting or downright impossible, especially when scaling from mineral deposits chokes up water pipes and equipment.
Even if you have a decent volume of water at your disposal, it’s not hard to recognise that you’re headed for trouble when your 50 mm pipe dwindles down to a tiny hole or your float valves stick shut. What was once a steady flow of water becomes a strained trickle – or ceases altogether. In the outback, where you might need to run pipes over dozens of kilometres to fill your buffer tanks and stock troughs, this problem is a significant obstacle.
When farmers see their sheep and cattle thirsting for water in hot weather, failing to put on weight due to poor water quality or growing sick from high levels of scouring or sodium chloride, they have a few options to fix their infrastructure. However, not all of these are ideal. Traditional approaches include:
- Clearing pipes with chemicals or by banging them. This process can potentially harm animals if chemicals enter their drinking water.
- Replacing old pipes with new ones. Costing from $10,000 to over $30,000 in pipes, fittings and labour, this option can quickly become expensive. Additionally, because the root cause of the problem has not been addressed, it’s not a sustainable solution, and farmers most likely will need to repeat this process when the scaling takes hold again.
Alternatively, sheep and cattle farmers can leverage water softener systems to prevent scale issues from starting in the first place. Hydrosmart’s scientifically proven water conditioner technology attaches to your existing infrastructure to break down mineral bonds and prevent build-up from forming – without adding any harmful chemicals to the water supply. The easy-to-install system requires no maintenance, so you can stop worrying about water and focus your energy on raising your stock.
