Water quality and quantity
Adequate, good quality drinking water is a precious resource and essential for meeting welfare legislation and achieving optimum physical performance.
Designing A Water Supply System for Livestock
This guide covers a wide range of issues that should be taken into consideration when designing a water supply system for a pig unit. These include infrastructure, cleaning and in-water medication, as well as the design of distribution and drinking systems. The guide includes standard values and calculations, which are a basis for ensuring that water is distributed safely, at flow rates and pressures that deliver volumes to satisfy the demand from livestock.
Download the guide here
A report written by RAFT Solutions Ltd. has collated information on how best to test, maintain and clean waterlines, as well as highlighting considerations when using water as a delivery vehicle for medication.
It includes:
- Guidelines for drinking water quality for pigs
- Advice on the most effective ways of cleaning water (both indoors and outdoors), depending on relative contamination and setup
- Advice on what to consider when setting up water systems in new and existing buildings
- Considerations when medicating through waterlines, to target antimicrobials and vaccines.
Further Resources
- Standard operating procedures (SOPs) for collecting water samples
- Basic sampling SOP (for farm assurance)
- Full analysis SOP
- Photo story: water sampling
- Water Supply factsheet
- Tips on saving a precious resource factsheet
- Monitoring water consumption to assist health management factsheet
- Water, soil and air (online resources)
- Code of Recommendations for the Welfare of livestock
Video: Find out about AHDB’s water sampling project from a farm near Glastonbury.