Thanks very much for coming along tonight. And, hopefully you're going to get, a little bit of information out of what we're going on over this evening.
So stock, water quality and quantity. What's to know is the title of our webinar tonight.
Just a few little bits of housekeeping. You might see this, at the top of your screen for your for your, teams. They, this button here, if you click that, you get a little dialog box on the right hand side of your screen. You can ask a question there. If you can type that out. And then we can have a look and get back to you on that. And when we get to asking some questions or says a burning question at some stage, if you tag this little hand symbol, we can get back to you and unmute. You play with questions. We'll try and hold most of those off until the the end of the presentation. So take some notes on what you might want to to ask.
And by way of introduction, my name is Paul Simpson. I'm a senior Land Services officer based out of Albany in, mixed farming. And we've got a few other people live tonight from like Lane Services and also Larry Walker from southern. So on TV to talk about blue green algae. So just a note that the video and Mike will be back on for the questions and answers and the sessions being recorded. For those of you who can't get to it tonight or for your convenience later on to have a look at it again. Plus take notes of any of the, resources that we have links to in the the presentation tonight.
So what is, this evening about? I'm just going to cover a little bit about why we actually here. Before we get into this evening's things, I'd just like to acknowledge traditional ideas of all the different layers upon which we might be, living and meeting tonight. And acknowledge the, elders past, present and emerging.
So part of the reason why we're talking about this this evening is that, as everyone's aware, except if you've had one of those one 40 millimeter rainfall dumps over the last few days on your property, dry conditions and in some places, significant diminishing water supplies. And as many land have mentioned to me over the last, 4 to 6 weeks, the impact of evaporation losses has been significant, on their water storage systems. And from that you can lead into any potential animal welfare issues that we're going to cover up in about a bit about that.
And maybe some of the information we covered tonight will, and that enable you to try and avoid some water carting or even better, if that's sort of on the horizon, you'll have some tools to work out when that might actually be happening.
So I'm going to pass it over now to, Mark Corrigan, and I'll let Mark introduce himself if you want to start sharing your screen, Mark and I'll get out of it.
And then, oh, can you say that? Yep. Oh, good. We're all good to go, so that's great. Hello, everybody. Thanks for coming on tonight. So I'm Craig, I'm one of the district bets. Located it over in van here. Tom and Mary like the lane services. You know, just fine. Like a. All right.
Yeah. So I've just put this picture up here and a cup with empty cup with water. It will measure if there's water in and, typical, very typical dam that was just recently tied to the, the property that he, and I'm sort of, as a vet, probably didn't really think about a lot about water until recently. So remember 20, 30 years ago, we had a, my parents had a property and it was appropriate was mainly fed by dam water and, and another property that had trap water. And it was interesting. My father used to say, gee whiz, the animals do so much better on the trough water. Direct from I can supply then, then from dam water.
And so that's intrigued me recently that we've understood a bit more about water and understanding, so water is the most basic. It's like the second most important nutrient after, of course, oxygen. At the cellular, it's it's needed for basic cell function and digestion and temperature regulation. But where as, as you can imagine, ruminants have got this big old and they call the called the room. And it needs lots of water and lots of good quality water to make that and function, function well and to permit to, have maximum production for those animals.
And when you consider, how much water an animal needs, I've just put those couple of things up, which we have dry sheep to 2630 die in a draw, a cat 35 to 80 waste dump. And that will change depending on the kind of the ideal weather in lactation and and temperatures, very high temperatures. Could imagine the cows, but drinking that 140 250l days if they had cats at full. So so always consider those titles in the first stage of lactation.
Some work done back in the 70s by Yateley demonstrated. The fact is that, water intake does affect feeding time. So some thought that this would ever occur these days. But they restricted water, as you could say, free choice to feed intake of 6.2 6.2kg a day. And as I restricted water, the feeding type decreases so as to get maximum reduction. We want to maximize feeding type which has a has a opportunity. So the water intake has been restricted. It definitely has food intake. So if we're watering stock and they're not getting the maximum amount of water they need, then there could be production.
Another study that was done by Kinsey was they found that they compared stop drinking out of dam water and particularly water from a dam water compared to a domestic supply. And they actually showed that by drinking the clean water that was 23%. Right. At what time the needs that were fed for drinking in the clear water. So it has a dramatic effect.
So, so when we think about water and these aren't exhaustive, some of the things we look at, but some of the basic water quality, things we look at, we look at some basic fact, basic factors, p how much water ideally it should be around neutral, but if you get to a click it can your acidity crisis and stomach upset and if you got the pay too high it can actually cause, digestive upset. Other things you can think about is what is water is hard water. Something high. Minerals such as magnesium, calcium silicates. It can increase the risk of, bladder stones and the like. So especially if we're on these concentrated diets at the moment, it's, we must consider what it is of hard water.
Other elements like iron can have an issue with, being type. If iron if it's too high levels of on that can affect your intake. Salinity is another one. I'll just show a graph and pollutants contaminate. So salinity. He sort of a basic table where tolerable levels of salinity, obviously depending on the type of animals within that group, like sheep or lactating, you might not be able to tell where this came. Dairy cattle cannot tolerate salt water as much as, say, beef cattle because they're consuming so much water and their consumption is so high.
When we think about water pollution or dirty water, some people love to eat. We can see that. What? Effect of water. So, one of the things we might think of is, as, you know, cats love gone in to eat a, dams and pooing and sheeting and things like that. Work done on, work done in the past, but looked at levels of, a car like levels or that could have an effect on water. And what they did show with water is contaminated with faces as that increase through contamination. The, the ability to drink that water. So they pulled off that water and they don't drink as much as they should. And obviously, if you're not drinking as much water as you should, then that actually has the effect on water intake, which is kind of size has an effect on production that we can think about.
Runoff is chemical runoff. So sector type pesticides can affect that quality of water as well. If you get a big rainfall then after after some spraying or something like that, LG there probably got a little bit more into that. But obviously it's, it's been a common thing at the moment as dam level gets lower. We've seen algal blooms. It's very it's actually quite common, but the actual poisoning is a bit near and we probably don't see it that common. But the but the times we do see it happen is when, animals are forced to drink that water with these theories and with the toxins, they, usually animals who die within 24 hours if they've sort of died. And it's pretty close to a water source that legally you can pretty likely to thought to potentially died of, plague right now.
It's a neurotoxin can affect stock. And I'll kind of saying a few stocks in the past have been clearly diagnosed with it. All the things we think about with dam water, quality water, especially around dam stuff, if we think about that is potentially other bacteria things such as they call like, salmonella, botulism, as you could say, there's an animal died by the, the dam there. But there's a risk of that botulism, the leptospirosis. And that's if you got, potentially a risk if you got Tom peaks and that sort of thing, they can spread leptospirosis. So day water can be more inclined because you've got the areas where animals can more or less double dirty water. These contaminants can be more likely to cause issues.
And also you think it might be dry and we haven't got those, there before. We haven't got those, like, maybe fluke type years, but probably something I've probably mentioned about poly water is, as you can imagine, we had that, bit of a spring and then we had would have had a bit of grain in the gullies, it would have dried off and, and lack of feed. So generally those areas that, stuck at forced into those 18, those, areas of where live, can exist, can have a pit to pick that up. So I've probably more mentioned that it's probably something to be aware of just because it's such a dry. You don't assume that your liver fluke probably has disappeared and gone away. Because they, they are pushing in those areas and, and consider and if you do think you've got liver fluke issues, consider talking to your problem a bit where they can do some blood tests to save exposure. But definitely don't let that, that go by the wayside.
The other thing that can affect, some environmental factors that can affect the way water temperature can play a part. A study that was done back between British and Brown and possibly a separate, demonstrated that actually the, both tourist type animals do not tolerate, hot water. So you can imagine if you're, you've got water being delivered to a trough for a pipe that sits on top of the, the ground that it's heating up, then it could affect the amount of intake and food efficiency in this study that actually found that, the Brahman type cattle, it didn't actually affect them so much on food intakes are much more tolerable, that weather tolerable, that, warm global water. So but definitely the Boston type animals, susceptible to that.
So when you're thinking about with water and what say you should consider some of these different age and condition of stock? So, younger lambs might need a bit more water. And then older ewes especially can potentially make more water if you have got lambs that they might need more water than inside dry weather, great differences. You've got they Merinos. I think British breeds have a don't, provide at least 20% more, 20% more water compared to Merinos. Morena is a very, young stoic animals and, can actually concentrate and year on greater than the British period so they can tolerate lesser amount of water.
Consider watering reduces. There's probably looking at 2 to 2.4 K when you think about watering points. And so they're a reasonable distance away. It's dog can get to and talk about your points. You should consider in some of those. And probably the what last thing I was just going to touch on today. Obviously the issue about animal welfare and and definitely with dam water, stock, can't get bogged in dam. So just be obviously very conscious of dams when they get low and understand that I've had dams that looked alright, but once you walk in there, a couple of ladies, very bubbly and potential risk. First stop them bugging their names.
So, hopefully I'm just sort of touched on some of those things today, but I feel it's kind of probably about time. I'll just do this, a case study that.
And this is probably thinking about the importance of testing water, understanding what's in the water. And especially depending on where that water comes from. So a case of one of my colleagues involved in we had 18 SDS died out of 75. Of these, these two sheep, there was no actual issues with the sheep. And the clinical signs are in hall. I flank depressed. Most had diarrhea or disinterested in the co pain lab testing had no significant finding. There's a number of different diagnoses. Say, salmonella studios, cottage blood clients. That is if it's sort of west of here, market toxin blue grain lead poisoning, lead poisoning, arsenic poisoning. Not like poisoning.
And the dam water tested negative for, blue green algae. So, that cleared that out. But what was found in the investigation that, that the dam was actually fed by, fed by boil water? It had quite a dramatically high electric conductivity of 32,000. That's pretty, pretty high. And had other, minerals and high, poor and heartfelt levels. Calcium, magnesium. So the dam was filled from the bowl. I had a mouse previously, and as that vein actually, diminished in the amount of water in the it actually concentrated it more and more. So eventually these casualties come to basically, well, so poisoning basically the in the diet.
It was interesting that the sheep was able to, tolerate those high levels. But, but I think the probably the most important thing is, I suppose what we're talking about is it's trying to improve your water to the best of, best of your ability, to improve production and welfare in animals. And if you aren't sure about the water quality, the important thing is to to get it tested. Until armpit and call. Probably talk about that a bit later. But, understanding the the quality of your water, say, can make judgments and understand what what you'd like to change to make that better for the stock. But, Good water, good protection. Good. Well fit. I think that Beatport high rise. Mark. That sounds great. That sounds great.
We've got a couple of minutes if there's any quick questions for Mark. But we can always come back, once we wrap things up before we move on to, to Larry.
Cathy. Yeah. Cathy's got a quick. Oh, there she is. Let's, Yeah, I think, Cathy, you should be able to unmute yourself there.
Thank you. Look, I don't know if this is a dumb question or not. I'm just where I am. I. We've got quite high acid soils. Would that. Affect the. Quality. Of the. Dam or would that affect the p h levels in the, in the dam water? Unless anyone else I probably would doubt very much. But I don't know whether it be a correlation between acidic soils and, acid water that, that would, that I'd be probably more about if it's just runoff water, you'd, you'd expect to it'd be fairly close to just neutral because just running off the ground.
I think the concern needs to be high if you're bringing up your water and understanding where that water's coming from. And that could have been a difference in page. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Have you got to come in on that one? I wouldn't have thought it might too much. Different. Say if you got country that tested, there might be some different minerals and stuff that get into it, but I wouldn't have thought it would significantly affect the page. Yeah, I generally get sorry generally. Acid soils. We're going to say acid water in our dent. So best sub soils generally are iph. So and that's where that water is held within the dam. And it has greater influence than those acid soils.
Just going on from that, we've got. Fairly high aluminum as well. Would that have any impact on the water quality? In terms of water quality? Not sure the Jeff or Mark aluminum stock. Generally of acid soils. Again, I wouldn't say significant issue. This when you think about the dilution factor of so much water coming off that landscape and the the amount of aluminum we're talking about in the soil, it tends to get diluted away. It would be unusual to have a major problem. And, and that's a pretty, straightforward one with it's, a water test. Kathy. That you can get tested as well.
Larry, you had something that they. Think she's got to say that the aluminum response would be dependent. So you would need to know if it was actually a strongly acidic dam or not. But from memory, you aluminum is a problem below that pH 4.5. Can then you guys confirm. Yeah. So certainly I think I could point five. Yeah. Yeah. But so great dam to be running that acidic would be quite extraordinary. Yeah. Yeah. Acid sulfide soils. So you know some of the wetlands on the floodplain down further south you might get some issues but not not on on farmland as such. Yeah.
Okay. Now I, I'm going to pull this up there for this set of questions. And I'll hand over to, Larry to talk a little bit more about, the blue green algae. Scenario. And I've got, you got about ten minutes there, Larry. So.
Yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah. There, buddy. That's okay. Can I just do a quick follow up point for for Mark, which is that, do a hell of a lot of, farm bacteria work where I am in southwest Victoria. And basically every dam, every creek, every river around here is like an open sewer. They're just they're just in horrific shape. Like I usually do. Do bacteria counts on a per 100 mil basis. And, honestly, issuing reports to clients to decide there's so many. I can't count the bloody things. There's well over 1 million bacteria cells per 100 million. Your water supply. And that's probably why your animals look like death on a steak. They really getting flogged hard.
But anyway, blue green algae. Mark, can I have your slide up with the take up? Because that was just a really nice shot of of a blue green algae. Dead. Can you all do that? Yeah, yeah, I'll get it for you. Yeah. Okay. And know I've got a multi a screen. I don't know if I've got to press a button. Where I should be sharing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Beautiful. Right. That sort of thing is just that, that classic, straight away question of is it blue green algae or not? The presentation looks about right. Usually in a phone call with with someone, I was saying, look, does it have any, any leaf or root structure or any springiness to it? Because usually any of those structural sort of contexts generally say, is not blue green algae.
Blue green algae. The easiest way to describe it in the field like that is it looks like some clouds means sprinkling sort of green sugar in the water. It's just sort of slightly granular, slightly clumpy. Oh, can I have that jar photo up, please? Because that'll that'll show exactly what I'm talking about. But in the meantime, when we sort of consider the view of that, then you really need to answer the question of is it blue green algae or not?
Yeah. So that's a sample that's coming to me. That's that granular sort of aspect I was saying about you can see it in that, in that lower layer in the jar, the decaying layers are in that, in that upper section. So it doesn't really have much structure to it, but there's a little bit of sort of fine lumpiness to it. I found that if it's just a a solid uniform green water, it's usually a little single cell, microalgae. So you can sort of do a little bit of field guesstimate work on, on what it might be.
All right. The living algae itself, I mean, all always you've got to remember that. Just blatant opportunists, you know, when when the nitrogen level and the phosphorus level and the temperatures are all good and the sun's out, they just basically party on and consume. That's all they're there for, is to be a consumer of all the material in the water. So yeah, you can get you can get many of these that just don't do anything except block your pump. So we'll give you grace. But bluegreen is a is a special little case. So we really need to actually take a sample and get an assessment done, using a microscope.
All the little, that little sort of cartoon picture thingy with the, the two algae types, please. Yeah. Because, yeah, basically, the sample will come to me, put it under a microscope. That's generally the two presentation aspects, and a binder NanoSystems, which are the two main blue green algae types. The Anna banner just looks like a classic string of pearls. It's a really strongly characteristic presentation under a microscope. And assist us usually seal those little green beads. And it has varying degrees of that, sort of that clear, snotty sort of. Yeah. The guys with that, there's probably a much more technical term for it.
But then the so that's the sort of presentation. Yeah. I'm literally I'm banking under a microscope and seeing what it looks like, poke and just grabbing that microscope shot. That's the sort of thing that's that's actually a phone photo down a microscope. So you can see some of those little ring structures in there, which are classics for that, that end up being a structure. And then that other gear in the background is just it's something else. Half the time I can work out what it is. Half the time it's like, guys, it's not a here now, I don't know what it is. That actually could be spirulina. So you can scrape it out and sell it to your local health food shop type of thing. Spirulina. Just look at this. Gorgeous. Look like, like green, spiral pasta.
Anyway. All right, so we've sort of we need to get an assessment done on do we actually have blue green algae or do we just have some other opportunist along for the ride? We get a confirmation of a couple of green algae. Two approaches at this point. One is basically like, can I live without this water supply? I'm going to have to stand off, because from what Mark was saying, there is there is a real toxin risk. Some of these things, pumping out, live specific hepatotoxicity. So you don't really want to play around and sort of see what the toxin is.
I'm running a service laboratory here. I didn't do that on the intro. So as a service lab, I find that if I was to send, water samples off for determination of toxin levels, I. It will be astoundingly expensive. And b by the time I get data back, the dam is now a completely different entity to what it was when I took the samples. So it's it's really hard to sort of do that in, you know, real time response.
But anyway. All right. So if we're saying we've got blue green algae on both, yeah. We white, it will just consume the nitrogen and phosphorus. It will die off. It will disappear. Being time. Oh we go aggressive and we kill off the, Now, in both instances when the yellow dies, the toxin release of the cell burst is the real problem. As far as I can determine. So if you spray the place out with, with a alga solid like Cooper X or Cooper solid, you're going to get that mass toxin released from burst. All the cells. You really gonna have to just hold the stuff off there for a couple of weeks until that, toxin. Then we'll just max off. Have to wait for it to dissipate. You'll still have to do that. Even if you wait for the algae to die as well, you end up with that post destruction, standoff and wipe. And usually that when it dies off it, it looks like someone's turned up and poured sort of blue green like blue gray paint on the surface of your dance. It's not that sort of vibrant green anymore. Just just turned into this. Yeah, bluish gray, sort of scummy crap on the surface.
Other than, so we have Cooper X in Cooper Sun. There's probably some others, but they're the mine to in terms of a copper based side. Oh, you can use copper sulfide. Dylan I'll just I'll start with blue stone. In most cases, you've got to be a little bit careful because the toxic, you know, the the toxic level 12 is about a milligram per liter of copper and you start rattling sheep, but I think about 5mg/l, so you don't have a hell of a lot of leeway. I have had people do the classic farmer response of sort of like if if a kilo is good, then 20 kilos will be excellent. And they've ended up with bright blue dams that no one can touch for the next 12 months. So a little bit of a little bit of caution.
There is another option if I can share a screen with you, bear with me for a second. That one. Okay. This, this is just a Google search page, but Falls Lock is, CSIRO developed product. It was then hived off into sort of private industry, but it works by it looks like granular super phosphate. You spread it like super phosphate. And as it passes through the water, it locks down the phosphorus content as lanthanum phosphide. And that's a sort of an unbreakable, material. It'll just park in the mud in the floor of the dam, and we we'll get back again. Stop sharing.
So yeah, make sure it is what you think it is. It's it's, you know, we don't really want to go scorched earth when it wasn't the correct idea in the first place. No, there was no. Sorry. Have I got the time? I'm. You got. About a minute and a half left. Larry. Sorry. Okay.
The other item to consider is can you actually sort of tidy up your water bodies prior to algae events? So I've had people have reasonable success by using of filtration on the arrival stream to their dams, where? Just hold back all the pieces and garbage off the landscape or ring fencing the dam, and then either allowing for layers to grow out or if you're not enough layers there. I use something lot of power. So you actually you create a plantation barrier to the dam so that the landscape flow has to actually go through that planted barrier and literally describes the off and holds it all back from, from parking in the dam.
Reducing fecal loads in your dam is a good thing. Reducing nitrogen is good thing. Reducing phosphorus is a good thing. Stopping animals from standing in the bloody water and pulling everywhere is a really excellent thing. There's a lot of behaviors that, yeah, generally we can adopt when we're not in the middle of a drought, but right now it's a, there's there's a whole subset of behaviors that we have to sort of say, well, we'll do that when it rains. But yeah, like I say in what I'm seeing around this area right now, yes, it's a problem. But honestly, bacteria lives in waterways and dams and reticulation networks. Much, much more immediate problem. I'd feel for he probably a lot of you guys too, because your, your ambient temperatures at higher. Yeah. It's, bacteria is a is a, Yeah. An entity that grows quite happily in response to temperature.
I think the general go to is that if you can have a black poly tank on the hilltop at 37°C, the bacteria content in that tank doubles about every 30 minutes continuously. So if your dams in 48 push it up to the hilltop tank for gravity distribution point, it can really get parasite from there. So we have had cases in this district of, a call out such over the years, which you can sort of get behind the system back and go, this is a water articulation network problem. Again, you guys might be in a different sort of structure and environment to me on those issues
Thanks, Larry. What what. We've done. Cool. Thanks, mate. Cody, questions to Larry. To the end. You might have some, interesting blue green algae, queries there.
What I'd like to move on to now is just a section on given the current conditions. And as I said before, unless you've had one of these massive downpours on your property and filled up your dams, which has probably drawn a lot of material into those dams, unfortunately. But if you're in a situation where your water is low, how do you work out how much you go out? And basically before that, how do you know how much you need? Now, if you're expecting rain to continue for the next few weeks and dams fill up, well, then you might be out of the woods. But in the short term, you might have to do some assessment on how to measure your dam capacity and what you stock against going to drink.
So I'm just going to kick off a PowerPoint presentation here. And we're going to get into a little bit of a quick and easy way to determine your livestock water needs. Can people say that. Can you say that Mark. Cool.
So the key mantra in a project we ran over the last two and a half years or so is know your needs, which is what are your stock water requirements now? Your numbers, which is really what supply you have on hand or access to. And if you go to get, you'll need a plan. And that's pretty simple. Yeah. A couple of key documents we produced that that project which there'll be some links to the the back end this and also there's QR codes there. There's a paid plan template and they step through a manual way to work out what water you have and what duck water needs you have.
So we're going to dive into the stock. Water needs first, and then look at a way to calculate what you've got on hand and measure the depth of your dams and how much water you have. And look at some of the losses. So although today's weather wouldn't suggest that it's the middle of summer, but I suspect everyone can think back to about only three weeks ago when the temperature was nudging 50 degrees in the north western part of Victoria and southern New South Wales as well, and probably went. Yeah.
So we're looking at summer water needs here. And these have sort of peak needs. They're a nice sort of fit in with what Mark was suggesting that some of these dry cows and cattle will drink in excess or need in excess of that 100l a day. And our sheep looking at around ten liters per day. And obviously in winter that drops off. Now, put some irrigated pasture figures in here, because we stretch a lot across the the northern part of the river. And there's plenty of people putting water on irrigated pastures. And obviously that reduces significantly the amount of what are you going to need? And there's a few people I know, there's some studs around the place and people who have horses, plenty of lifestyle and hobby properties with family horses. And you average sort of horse is around that 50l. But I'd say in this hot weather it's going to be a little bit more than that as well.
So we know how much they're going to drink on a per day basis, but how do we convert that into now and how much we need? So I've got an example here. We've got a mob of a thousand use dry heat. All lambs end of long gone. And fortunately we've well enough. Any cars we had on these cars may classify on them as a dry cow. And we've got our ten liters per dry you there now? 100 for that. We've got Mike's the massive birthday here. And also throw in the gray kangaroos here. Not so much. Because everyone's got a problem with gray kangaroos. But just to remind you that there are other things that do drink out of your dams, and you might have an issue with pigs and all those sorts of things they can add to the cumulative need for these dams.
So if we do some maths, they're pretty quick maths. This is just a daily total daily title for that thousand. What we use in the cattle day, that's 10,000l for each of those mobs. And if we look for the title period, I've just used a period of 60 days, two months. Normally when we do these calculations, we do the math of the whole period of summer, but we're just doing it 60 days. And if you've got a dam and you think it's getting even more, you might list them at that to 30 days to work out the amount of water the stock are gonna need.
So that's how we work out what our water needs are. And we end up with just over 1,000,000l here. And if you're familiar, as many people would be with the megalitres if you bought water or understand it. That's 1.2 megalitres. So remember that number? Because we'll come back to that when we work out how much water we got on hand.
So how do we measure the demand of water we've got, it's pretty simple maths. If you look on the back of your old textbook that you had from 30 years ago, it's probably a little equation. They have had a look at the volume in the water in a vessel. So is not different. So we've got the length the length by the width that gives us the surface area. So in this one we call this a square. Then so 30 by 30. And then we times by the depth. And then this thing called the betta factor which I'll get on to.
And so we got a little I've got it's the H on it, not the haven't got the depth, but how do we measure the depth? Well, you could send the grandkids or the kids out there and dive down and get a rough estimate, but there is a few better ways to do it. If you're a fisherman or fish person, you might have a sonar boy that you can. Or if you're big enough to drive around with your fish finder. But one of the gadgets that was invented by one of my agric colleagues, Greg Becker, is a Dam data and if you go into some of our water planning workshops over the last couple of years, you would have seen these gadgets. And we have a range of these at some of our lawless offices. Or you can get in touch with me and I can organize, try and get money out to you.
So this QR code on this video, talk about it, show you how it's how you use it, basically lob it in the sink, it sinks, the float floats. You measure the distance in between the two. Once you pull it out and you can work out the depth. So that's the trickiest one of the all these equation, these parts to measure. But it's probably the most critical. So there's a gadget to help you do that. So I think the Greg Becker and his colleagues in Big.
So this is where we get a little bit more into the maths. And it's pretty simple maths. So volume as we said length boy width by depth. And the bed effect. So we've got our surface area 900m². And we look at the depth and we get 3600m³, which is 3 million and 600,000l. Now that's all pretty good. However, we look at these diagrams over here and as everyone knows, you them it hasn't got straight walls. Although there are a few rare ones around that were built, at a particular period.
So we need to account for this slope that takes off, the volume in here. So general three one better. The better factor is 0.4. And if you quickly do maths you go oh okay. So the dam size I get less than half of what the other dimensions would suggest. So 3600 times 0.4. We do the maths there. I mean that with 1.44 megalitres. So this theoretical dam we've got here, if it was at maximum capacity to hold that.
Now, one of the things to remember, if you're assessing the capacity of your dam at the moment is no point measuring the maximum capacity you want to measure what except the water level you've got. So that's how you measure that net 30 by 30 dam there at the moment. That might be in the 20 by 20 or 15 by 15. And easy to paste that out if you know. Yeah. Yeah. Spacings the dimensions width and width and length probably not as critical as getting an accurate read on the depth.
So that's a really quick way to look at how you would do those measurements. So that circle a little bit different. There's some equations in those two books. So I mentioned there and they are available to download. From a that QR code site.
So it's all well and good to have this water in you then. But as everyone knows, there are losses from dams. And the key one there is evaporation. A rule of thumb, basically, if you've got a dam that's three meters, full at the start of summer and you're in this sort of middle section of the Murray like lane, region around that Holbrook cocaine, you might expect to lose out of that three meters, maybe a meter of that three meters over the summer period. The further you go waste, you'd expect to lose a lot more of that water through just evaporation. That's where the energy stock usage and otherwise.
So you've got to, allow for that in your calculations. So this dam we've we've worked out here now evaporation this millimeters per day, people of would have heard of pin evaporation, particularly, those in irrigation areas and where water storage is a significant, and with that dam, we're looking at the 900m² at our. This is probably around that. Holbrook. Okay. And it probably about a maximum you'd get in the middle of summer. So we're looking at just around 5000. Just add 5000l per day in evaporation losses.
You cast your mind back to our water needs for our stock. That's half the amount of water that that mother sheep needed in a day. So we're losing that amount of water per day just in evaporation. Another couple of things we need to layer for seepage loss. Very conservative one millimeter per day. If you've got a leaking you then in that sort of gets up to about five millimeters per day. You got some really serious issues there. And we've got this residual or dead water. And as Mark alluded to, welfare issues with stock, ideally you don't want to be pushing stock and to be sucking up those last couple of liters of water because there's all sorts of issues.
So we putting here that, we're going to have some residual water left in the dam. And it's also discussion around needing some moisture lifting that dam to maintain the integrity of it for when it does start to rain again. So we've got some significant losses in here that we need to take into account.
So if we go back to our old dam and our model, a couple of models of sheep and their cattle, our 1,400,000 or so liters, which was looking pretty good. We knock off over 300,000 in evaporation, and we got seepage, and we've got residual water there. And if we're not going to have 21,000l a day without sheep and a cattle, it says we've only got about 65 days water remaining in that dam. So that's a really short way and a pretty easy way to calculate on your own property. And you might have a number of dams you could add together, and that'll give you an indication of how much water you've got.
And some people are so low at the moment, they're already started carting water and this will also help you if you've got a dam and you can predict how long that's going to last, you can start to think about if you need to cut water and how are you going to set up that, kind of water system. And Geoff and again, I have a chat about that, very shortly.
So just to mention a few resources around the dam calculations that farm water management planning project, that site that has that CSU, the Southern drought Hub, has a massive number of resources, calculators and reference to other material has a copies of those booklets you can download and work your way through the manual calculations of all those. But those booklets actually help you get your head around drought strategy planning water for your whole farm when you get the chance. Obviously not the ideal time now that time's gone, think about it. Once we get back to a decent season, a really good resource from our colleagues over the border there in Victoria.
A really good one. It's called the summer water calculator. And when you have a look at this video later or just do a quick internet search, some water calculator agric comes up there and you can feed your numbers into that, and you can get those calculated automatically there on the system, and you can put your livestock classes in as well. And it discusses and gives you some readouts on that. So that's a really handy tool.
There's also like land service offices statewide and there's some specific offices out of the southern New South Wales Drought and Innovation Hub. One of those is with us tonight, Jeff mentioned, so if you have any queries about drought, water supplies and how you might need to assess those water quality, these are some of the guys to talk to. Southeast Mcaliskey there is based out of Goulburn, Brett Littler, think he's out of Budgie. Is that right? Jeff? Yep. And Jeff is covering the Riverina in the Murray at the moment. And just based out of that to more office, but has a pretty big patch to cover at the moment.
And the last group, I just want to mention a lot of like a farmer organizations and lanky groups, networks were involved in the farm water. Many the planning project. And those organizations have access to a lot of resources. And they people who took part in these this project, really up to speed with helping people, do some of those farm water dam assessments. And of course, there's myself as well, to contact about doing any more of this farm water budgeting.
So that's I might pull that up just there. Folks, and we've got a couple of minutes, I think, before we jump onto this last section. Any quick questions?
Oh. There's one in the queue and I pull that radio. Do you need anything expanding? Okay. Good question. So there's a question, and, and this sort of it's nice segue, Jeff, into what we're talking about. If reticulation systems going to a header tank, is it worth looking at any bacterial tank treatments to cover for bugs? That's a good question.
I would be I wouldn't know the best answer for that, Larry or Mark. I wouldn't have thought. It depends where the water's coming from. I suspect it's coming out of a dam versus that of a bore out of, rainwater tanks. So that would be my take on that. The best way to assess that end would be to get that water tested. And it's a bit of a sidebar. Murray like lane services and I think Riverina as well, Jeff, have, free water quality testing going at the moment. So if you trundle along to, one of the, like lane services offices, they'll be able to most of them or not most of next and a couple and I, Deniliquin and Albury offices have the farm water sampling kits. And if you bring a clean sample in as in a bottle that hasn't been full of motor oil or something else, a nice clean, sterilized bottle with a sample of water in, we can help you get that away to the lab.
And if there's any suspicion there might be blue gray, now, we can organize that in the testing as well. But, the question before on that testing is a pretty standard one to come back to, to get it in a few minerals and salinity levels and let you know what sort of quality you're looking at there. So, with respect to the antibacterials in here, the tanks, any comments?
Say Michael cheerful there. You know, you got guys. I was just going to say that, a scenario I'm seeing a lot around here is what I was talking about. That hilltop poly tank, a dam to the tank to the trough, and you can just watch the bacteria levels just multiply up across that network. And so I'll often request people to send me that as three as a, as a, like a sweeping audit across the property. What's the dam delivering. What's the tank delivering. And then go to the further as trough in the network. And just see how I've got over the water is that comes out of the lawn.
I'll sit there with that. Does that you know, God, I really shouldn't that bits of paper. It really bugs up the camera, doesn't it? That's good. All right. Yeah, that was just to say trough clean. There's still guys I have come in to go. Oh, what do you want? To claim your troughs. So, that count then? We had 190 E.coli, 400 coliform, 300,000 other unidentified bacteria per 100 mil. After reclaim the trough, the pre cleaning phase were 2500 call. I couldn't count the column homes. There's just thousands of them and over a million unidentified bacteria per 100 mil. So cleanliness means. But yeah. In terms of your question on treatment, I've got a lot of clients in this area, that just chucking a couple of liters of industrial bleach in that hilltop poly tank, and they just they're just doing it as a daily routine grab. You grab your coffee in the morning and a treadmill cup.
Drive up the hill, top tank, bang a couple of liters of industrial bleach, 30% industrial bleach. Not the 2% domestic. And yet we're seeing real, real measurable response, particularly feedlot type guys. They can they can measure their response in white going on chlorinated networks, nurses, rural water networks. So it's our happen.
Thanks, Larry. Thanks. So, if there's more questions, we'll get on to those a little bit later. If we got the time. I just wanted to move on to a little bit more of the practical considerations with the what's standing in front of people at the moment. And, Jeff, Mitch and myself, I might get you to introduce yourself in a segue, Jeff, and also about your own family farm as well. And then we'll just run through a few questions that people might have. And I'll throw a few at you, and then we might open it up to a bit of general discussion about how people can meet their water needs. And I'll throw it out to you for any.
You know, as Paul CHF mentioned, by stopping tomorrow. I've worked with state government for 20 years and in and ag extension and natural resources growth. I have an agronomy background, also have our own property, in Central Riverina, just about, just under an hour north of Wagga. And, yeah, we, we've been through a number of droughts out there and we, we've learned lots of things over that time. And I actually started my career, in extension, back in the millennium drought, in, in sort of the, Southwest Slopes and Tablelands area. So, yeah, back then we learned a lot about, water quality, sizing of dams and, how to run bores dry when it gets very dry.
Yeah. Thanks, Jeff. I think I might sort of dive into some pretty hard, not hard questions, but stuff that people interested in. If you had to give a few tips around how to manage your water at the moment, if you're looking, water is looking a little bit low and you've got stock, what are some of the things that you should be thinking about and considering around that? For example, if you've got water in a paddock but no feed and, and potentially vice versa, and what are the some of the others to think about.
Yeah, that's a common scenario that you've got water with no feed and feed with no water. Some options. It really is looking at setting up some temporary troughing. So it might be, a poly pipe which siphons over the back of a bank, into a to a next paddock, or takes 2 or 3 over to another property where you can set up a trough. It's run off a siphon. If you don't have the luxury of a full where you can create a siphon, then it becomes a solar pump or a pressure pump where you can move that water around the property for on a temporary basis until we get some footfalls of rain.
Yeah. Some of the things that we see. It's interesting listening to Larry, but February's algae month every year and particularly in a dry year, we get algal blooms and algal inquiries during the month of February, and it's game to low and temperature rises. And then we start to see more and more algal blooms in stagnant water. You know, 1 or 2 is just a real ground cover. And it's a critical place around drought management is trying to maintain ground cover. We get back to pretty low levels. And that last bit of faded sitting on the ground doesn't have a lot of quality, but what it can do is keep manure and sediment and silt at a B dam.
If you can, we can lay that cover still there. And it's sure as anything with these long dry spells, the rain that breaks in is often a big, heavy storm. Like we say, we saw that and we don't go the other day. And we're seeing in the in the northwest corner. We see these big dumps of rain, and we end up with a lot of manure and a lot of grass and sediment, silt and other things for going to dams. Then we run into a different problem of not having enough water and our water quality being low to having plenty of water, but our water quality is still low and unusable because of all the impurities in it.
Yeah. Now that's good. And, Geoff, a simple system. Yeah, yeah. Water source. I had a tank down to the way gravity feed to a trough is a pretty common thing, whether it's on an extensive system that you've set up in the past or an improvised system, because I'm guessing there's no value at all in carrying water and putting it in a dam.
No, I have to be honest, I have seen that. I definitely wouldn't recommend it. It's soul destroying, dumping trucks of water into a dam and then it just disappears into the mud. So then you have to go and get more. If you have to cart water at all by by truck, you really need to go into a tank and have a trough set up so that you maximizing the use of that water, that is still put into a pipeline, into a head, a tank, and into a trough, possibly with a solar power pump that keeps filling the tank all the time. Is a very common and pretty simple system.
Yep. Yep, that sounds great. And, Geoff, I'm just mindful of time here. There any when you setting up a system in terms of piping is a very critical thing. The diameter and the loss of pressure. And is there any sort of rules of thumb that generally go along with the shape or cattle systems you might be setting up?
Yeah. Look, we always go for high flow, particularly with cattle. So, you know, two inch or 63 mil pipe. So you're getting high flow, and high pressure or high flow and keep, which give you plenty of pressure. For sheep systems, you can get away with an inch and a half type pipe or 50 mil. But again, we always reward large pipe if we can, particularly if you got a transfer of water any distance, because the friction loss in the distance in that pipe will lower your pressure and allowing it flow. So always go to a large size pipe as best you can and get an irrigation expert to actually design the system for you. If it if it's extensive.
Yeah. That's that's great. And, Jeff, one of the discussions I have often and you hear when we doing some containment area discussions is about the peak flow rates. So paddock trough systems, you've obviously got a big bunch of animals that seem to crash on the troughs. Can you just talk a little bit about peak flow rates and what that is in the implications of that in either paddock system or a containment system?
Yeah. So you really want that peak flow coming through that pipe that when animals come to drink water, they're not actually dropping the level of the pot of that trough at all, because if the water level drops, they'll start molding a trough, and can be disastrous in some cases. So depending on the number of animals you've, you're watering, we like to say up to two liters a second, I think it is. Or 1.5l at least. So that when animals are drinking and they've got all their heads around that trough, that we don't see that water level dropping, that is enough to replenish it.
You will find animals that come to trough. They will have a pecking order, and animal behavior will mean that they'll just move in and drink and move away until those water levels drop. Anyway, they say the water drop in, that they can start to get a bit anxious about that.
Now that sounds good. And Geoff, what about trough size? I mean, in the paddock. It's a bit critical with your peak flow. What about containment areas which you mentioned ground cover before and containment areas, a great way to maintain protect that ground cover. What about trough sizes and what you might have?
Yeah. So for cattle, we always recommend concrete. For temporary systems, you can get away with poly for short periods of time. But for longer periods of time, we'd be looking at concrete for cattle. Sheep generally you can get away with almost anything sometimes, but a concrete or poly trough, obviously, concrete is going to last a lot longer. One thing we harp on a lot is it's a lot about flow and less about volume, is that you just want plenty of flow to fill those troughs. In containment, you want that water turning over regularly so that it actually keeps the troughs cleaner. And you don't get the dust on the surface, less algae issues in those troughs, and you constantly refilling those troughs and turning the water over.
I think that that stands to reason as well in the paddock system that you don't want a trough massive, that the water is not turning over regularly. You sort of need that constant turnover. And it's mostly about flow, less about trough size. No, that sounds great.
I'll just got a couple of photos, Jeff, of some reasonable trough setups and some not so reasonable trough setups. And then we might get some questions from folks. So obviously, this trough on the right here, I've got this cage around it and the float and everything's protected on the inside and stops stock getting in there, and young calves as well. This gadget on the left here, this is actually a water trough meter. Measures how much water is in that trough and sends a signal, probably via wireless phone network and tells you what's going on with that. If you've got troughs or a bit remotely need to monitor these things.
And a couple of examples of things you might not want to aspire to. Obviously these troughs been picked away by stock and a lot of stock around over the days and years. Also this one here. Great. They've got a bit of a cage on it, but obviously the flow, it's not working or it's actually flooded away and the whole thing is just pouring out water. And this is obviously a system here where the stock have pushed it and and giving it a bit of grief and now there's a bit of a hot water with it.
There's a couple of other things you might want to look at getting good bedding around your trough systems so that they're not going to suffer these sort of consequences. So putting down a road base pad down or even some conveyor belt underneath those troughs and around that main area can help stabilize the ground.
Galloping issues with those other troughs that are leaking there. The float in the trough is actually set too high. So the water's going over the edge. They need to be set lower so that there's a, you know, a 20 mil gap or so between the top of the water or the top of the trough.
Yeah. That's a good point. Well, we might wrap that one up there, Jeff, and open the floor there if you want to open up the microphones. But there's just one of the questions in the Q&A there. Cathy's asked, what is the benefit of a header tank versus a solar pump direct to a trough? You want to take that one, Jeff?
Yep. So a header tank gives you storage in the line so that if something goes wrong with your solar energy so you get a cloudy day, the pumps not working, and it's not pumping enough water or there's a break in the line somewhere or there's an issue with the solar pump, at least if you've got a header tank that might give you a day, two days or even three days as our recommendation. You've still got water in the line, which gives you water in the trough until you can get that issue. So particularly solar pumps, you need some storage in the line that will, if you get a cloudy day or a cloudy run of days that you've got water in the line to keep that tank naturally full until you get a sunny day. Not so much of an issue in the summer where we get very long days and plenty of sunlight. But in the mid season or spring and particularly the winter where you get lots of cloudy days, you may not fill that tank.
Thanks, Jeff. Yeah. Great idea. And I'll just put up a picture. There's some rough design set ups, and they could be a temporary or a permanent system, depending how you're traveling with the water. And obviously different styles of systems there.
So yeah. Any more questions from anyone out there? Oh, that's a question earlier for Maureen, around appropriate water testing for river water stock accessing river water. Yeah, that was a good one. I saw that one. Thanks, Nick.
Yeah. Maureen, as I mentioned there, like land services got free water testing going at the moment. And that's just a basic test that they do to assess suitability for livestock. And that's a pretty standard test you can get done from most sorts of labs. There's labs around the place. I know Albury Council have their lab at West Albury, there's a lab in Benalla and there's a few others around will do that. And that's probably just your best way to go about it. And it'll give you a rundown on the basics. And if you do need some help to interpret that, then, as always, the local services offices to help you with that as well.
The labs are, I think generally some of them do will give you a sheet of, if it's a livestock test, they'll give you some levels of salinity, tolerance and other elements. Like Mark mentioned before with the salinity for the different stocks. So hopefully that answers your question, Maureen. But yeah, it's a pretty standard livestock testing stuff out of the river, plus out of any other system.
Larry, do you actually have access to bacterial testing in your area? Maybe in any of those service labs? I think we do, but they're they're sort of above the general kind of things. If people want to go down that level, if there's any suggestion that there might be an issue, then that some of those labs do do that is, I think, right. Again, because the question was about river water. And it may again be a local thing for where I am, but the river water here is bloody awful. People are pumping water to the holding dams, and I'm advising them that you set up a treatment system as you exit that there, you know, just access that that extra water.
Yeah. No. That's good. Any other questions at the moment or just another one for Mark, actually, just on the alkaline scenario there with the waters and potentially bladder stones and that mark, is that something that's more of a consideration for breeding stock. You're going to keep on the property versus stocking on the turn off. Or can that really develop in a short period of time and affect say lambs getting sent off and will you get marked down at the processors potentially for that. Or Jeff might have a comment as well.
I mean, I think the understanding is, is what are they being fed if they're on concentrates, there's potentially more issue regarding that to, to fall in. But a lot of times, I look the probably biggest worry for bladder stones is actually losses and death Valley water and things like that. So I think that Brian and then if you're fighting with water that's got high calcium, magnesium, all those things we could talk, and then yeah, potentially those could fall. I mean, other things you see around forming of bladder stones is it's easy to water if you there's a risk if stock aren't getting the maximum out of water and not drinking enough, then that can actually get due to less water being in their blood as it can cause those crystals to form will eventually make more stones.
Okay. Might have something else to add to it. And I'm guessing, Mark, that if that's in breeding stock and you keep them on the farm, that they've got that condition for a long period of time that will affect production, reproduction and all the rest of that sort of stuff. What easy bits can be there if they get bladder stones and go down for and it causes problems. Yes. So it can cause losses. So as for a lot of times called lost production is when the crystals that are lodging in the area for and that could cause problems. And that can cause issues. Just anything that they.
Yeah. Look, I was just going to say what you're saying near the end, like, that'd be pretty uncomfortable for the animals. It's not great for animal welfare. And production losses can be significant. So it's best to try and avoid it or do something to try and lessen the risk of it just through that process.
No worries. Well, I think, Locked up. I was frozen. I think the velocity. Bigger advice might be, to be honest, when I. Say I might just. Just jump in while everyone's locked up, then, I did have a case some years ago locally. That was shed its shape, and they were being fed on a very high calcium, magnesium bore water supply. And it turned out that the pellet lines were where a high calcium pellet line is like 10% limestone or something in the pellet, and they lost quite a sizable percentage with kidney stones the size of your thumb. That was bloody horrific. So that's kind of the worst case of the situation. There we go.
Well, Paul was gone. Mark, I've had a question from earlier in regards to water quality and quantity requirement over here in the west of the region. There's obviously stock at this stage on both stables and saltbush plantations. What are the impacts there with quality, obviously quantity requirements are higher. It was time with dry food. I mean, you can imagine I mean, it's a pretty amazing animals. I can take that pretty dry feed we've got at the moment and turning into muscle and meat. But definitely yeah. Saltbush I suppose consideration if you're on high salt water with high salinity then potentially that could exacerbate the problem. And obviously the higher salt and they may not be consuming enough water or can't get enough of their intakes to manage that.
And obviously with dry feed, you need to provide plenty of water so that can mix in the rumen and make that fermentation process work. And that's in comparison to when stock are on green crop and there's plenty of water and plenty of fluid that their actual fluid requirements are a lot less. And even then in the past, they might not drink much water because they get enough through the wet crop. But definitely this time of year, the consumption is going to be maximized due to trying to turn that dry feed into something that the rumen bugs can process and break that all down.
Yep. Absolutely. Looks like we've definitely lost Paul. So I think we've gone a little bit over time. So we might wrap up there. I think thanks, Larry, Mark and Jeff for presenting. So Paul sends his regards wherever he's gone. I mean, the audience are there to jump on the phone. The computer's obviously computers got a bit tired. I'll leave it to you to wrap up there, Nick, but yeah. Thanks everyone and all the presenters. And if we want to hang around for a couple minutes after, that'd be great.
