Mares coming in and gulping water from their buckets. I thought it might be water needed changing in their tub - but now wondering about stray current from the tub heater. How would you know if this is the problem?
One way to know for sure is to take the heater out of the water trough, go ahead and clean the tub, change the water, and then see if the water level goes down and then see if they still go straight to the water in their stalls when brought inside.
There are grounding kits for water trough heaters and do-it-yourself ways to ground using a grounding rod for electric fences. Both I think having varying success. Some horses are just very sensitive to anything electric in their water. You might also try one of the 30 gallon heated buckets outside - since the heating element isn’t in contact with the water, horses that are really sensitive shouldn’t have an issue drinking out of them.
It is possible to measure the micro current, with a “micrometer”. An electrician friend did it with mine. He was amazed to find the tiny current running in the water (my heater is not in contact with the water, it is under the tray that holds the water). But it was there. We have tried several fixes though the years, that electrician grounded the trays with another wire, but that didn’t work either. I ended up changing where my electric ticker box was located, and THAT did fix the issue. My plug in ticker box for the electric fence WAS in the barn, I moved it to a remote area, with a solar box rather than a plug in one. This was the best fix for the issue. Where is your box? Close to your water source? Also, moving your ground rod to a greater distance from the box can help too.
1 Like
I have two heated tanks in my main dry lot paddock. I notice they prefer to drink out of the one farthest from the electric fence charge box - as another poster mentioned above. They do occasionally drink from the closer one, so the shock is not drastic, but most definitely not preferred.
