Inside-the-stall water buckets--best container to use?

[Hermein]

I’m asking for a quick and easy solution to get water to my stalls because the runouts are flooded, have been flooded, will receive even more water tomorrow, and I know that some of the horses aren’t fording the lake to get to their water barrels that are at the end of the runouts. (How’s that for a run on sentence?)

I don’t want to move the barrels inside the stalls because I KNOW beyond any doubt that they would dump them and have no dry places to stand at all.

Is hanging buckets the best solution?

[walkinthewalk]

I have eye hooks screwed into convenient places in the stalls, then tie a double end snap to the handle of the water bucket, which sit flat on the floor.

Thankfully my horses don’t play in the water and the buckets stay upright.

Im not fond of hanging water buckets as, by the time they get hung high enough to not cause problems, they are too high for a horse to drink in a natural manner. I. Turn, that might keep some horses from drinking as much as they normally would.

What about icing up? Is the freezing weather an issue? You could always drill a hole big enough for the plug head and cord and plug into a construction duty extension cord, if there isn’t a plug near the stall.

[partita]

I occasionally hang buckets, but sometimes I will put a muck bucket in the corner if it looks like freezing weather for several days. If you are concerned about them tipping them over, maybe run a 2x6 across the corner to hold it in? Or tie a cord around it and attach to the wall? The muck buckets have the two rope handles you could attach someplace.

[Hermein]

Thanks for the ideas. It will be below freezing tonight, but I put them out in a pasture that isn’t quite so muddy for overnight so they can move around.

My barn is a prefab with heavy, thick walls so I’ll need to drill for whatever solution I can manage. I guess I could chain the buckets with a chain around the top and a shorter one at the bottom, or maybe just setting the water bucket inside a muck bucket would do.

Our place is part of the Tulare Lake Basin* in CA–flat as a pancake with silty soil that’s as fine as flour–fertile but slippery as ice.

*Drained in the early 1900s to allow more farming. It once was well over 600 square miles in area.