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
'Designing a water supply system for livestock' covers a variety of issues that you should consider when designing a water supply system. 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.
Optimising the use of antimicrobials is a report written by RAFT Solutions Ltd. and includes 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.
Webinar: Health and antibiotics, keeping the balance (Part 2: Water)
During this webinar, we heard from Nigel Penlington (AHDB) and Mark Jagger (Tulip). Nigel and Mark spoke about the importance of water supply, water quality and the practical approach, and looked at how BQP/Tulip moved from in-feed medication to in-water medication.
Further resources
- Water supply factsheet
- Acceptable drinking water parameters for pigs factsheet
- Survival time of pathogens in water factsheet
- Managing mineral content of water for pigs factsheet
- Controlling iron, manganese and limescale in livestock water systems factsheet
- Case study: water sampling and cleaning
Cleaning a water system and choosing organic acids for pigs
- 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.
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