What kind of Drinker should I get?

[Cattledog]

I am currently redoing our barn and overall cattle facility.  I was wondering what everyone,s thoughts were on different cattle drinkers.  Also, are there solar powered heaters that you can get?  Since we are in Illinois and lose power 2 or 3 times a year I was hoping to find something to help with the freezing.

 

[P-F]

Stay away from the ball type drinkers they are like toilets, very nasty plus we have freezing issues with them, cattle drip water on the ball when drinking and then they freeze up, esp over night, hubby is constantly carrying hot water out to them when in gets below 20 to unfreeze the ball.  they are then fine all day but overnight ill freeze up again., you can manipulate water levels but I would avoid the aggravation and go with something other than a ball type.

We use both the water master, no heat to keep from freezing it, just a constant water trickle plus enough cows
even in the neg numbers no problem, and the omni fount  we have out in the open on an 80 acre pasture, but it is heated,  We are going to replace all our ball type mirafounts one of these days really hate them!  As I said they are just nasty!


Here is their website
http://www.ritchiefount.com/products.html

 

[Jill]

We have the Thrifty Kings (in K-State Purple) and love them, the ball will freeze when it gets down around 0, but that's the only time we have had a problem with them.

 

[dori36]

I'm a Ritchie fan.  They're an old company who knows how to do livestock waterers the right way.  Mine are connected to an electrical source but even though we, in Michigan, also lose power a few times/year, I've never really had it be a big problem.  I also had them in Wyoming where winter is REALLY winter and had no problem there.  I can't recommend them highly enough!

 

[WWS]

We use the mirafounts and have never had a problem but we are in south central illinois so we don't have extremely cold temps it did get down to around zero or slightly below on actual temp before and we never had a problem with them icing over or freezing.  You do have to make sure you clean them out every so often so they don't get nasty inside but it takes no time at all.  I would never have a waterer that was heated with electricity just have heard horror stories and wouldn't want to take the chance no matter how safe they claim it is. Ours is heated through geothermal heating.