 Good afternoon, thank you for joining us today for the next session of our Preparing Your Ranch for Drought webinar series. Just a few things before we get started. I'm Miranda Meehan, I'm the Livestock Environmental Stewardship Specialist with NDSU Extension, and I'm one of the speakers today. But a few housekeeping things. All these webinars are recorded and will be posted at www.eggndsu.edu backslash drought. So if you missed something, you can go back and find the recordings for this and any of our other webinars there. Please use the chat to discuss ideas among yourselves. If you want everybody to see that, make sure that you have selected all panelists and attendees when you're typing in there, otherwise only the panelists are going to see what you put in there. And then for questions, make sure to put those in the Q&A box so that we can make sure that we get those all addressed at the end and we'll be holding those questions to the end. And our next webinar is next Thursday, same time March 11th and we will be talking about herd management and reduction strategies. So as I said, we're going to be talking about livestock water considerations today. I'm Miranda Meehan and I'll be speaking and joining me is Dr. Gerald Stucka, our Extension Veterinarian and Livestock Stewardship Specialist. Yeah, thanks Miranda. So Miranda and I are going to switch back and forth a couple times here, but it's good to be with you this afternoon and I think everyone in the audience understands how critical water is for livestock. And so just a couple of statistics here to keep in mind that most of our bodies and the bodies of livestock animals are water. You think about it this way when we look at that third bullet point of 10% loss of body water equals death. We sometimes get scouring calves or calves of diarrhea in the spring and if they're 10% loss even on a 100 pound calf that's 10 pounds of water that they've lost. So think about that as you try and rehydrate an animal that's really dehydrated to that point and how difficult that is and how much water it actually takes to rehydrate an animal. Another issue that comes into this discussion is when we talk about shrink, when we transport cattle and how easy it is for an animal to lose 50 pounds or more just by not having enough water and being on transport. So it's a critical issue for livestock and it's important for understand for us not only health situations but how important water is for the life and health of that animal. So these are just gives you an idea of the water requirements based on you know what their production category is and based on how big they are. You can see here some references for example a dry cow and have for the difference between when the outside temperature is 60 versus 90. At 90 degrees they're drinking twice as much water as they were when they were drinking at 60 and I'll just drop down here maybe to finishing cattle because this is sometimes where it becomes really critical and again just look at the difference. Let's take a big a thousand pound animal the difference between 60 and 90 again is doubled and one of the things that we see in animals especially in feedlots a lot of times we have these automatic waterers and there's a lot of times not enough space around those waterers for them to drink many at a time and so the issue of that animal being able to get enough water intake when it's really warm and humid becomes really critical when we see how much they actually need and how much water has to be available for several animals at a time. So critical issue this is just an idea of how much they actually consume. So we're talking mostly today though about water quality as it relates to cattle and pasture and many of us have lived and used water. It's an interesting issue in North Dakota we call them water holes. In Texas they call them tanks. In Kansas they call them ponds but they're basically all the same thing they're just kind of a dugout in which water runs off the the hills and into this dugout or tank or pond and carries everything with it. So obviously there can be many different things in that water that's now being consumed not only by by adult cattle but also calves as well and there can be bacteria in there. There can be E. coli salmonella which would be a very important pathogen to consider. E. coli is more of an issue with young calves not so much with adults but salmonella can impact cattle at any stage of life and it's also a human health impact as well. Even leptospirosis which can cause abortions in cattle can be significant in some of these waters. Parasites we think of parasites sometimes we think of internal parasites you know that are on grass but we actually have parasites at me that will have survivability and livability in water as well. Cryptosporidium is one of them and cryptosporidium is usually involved with calf scours again. GRD is another one that can be involved just particularly in young animals again and the one we're going to spend a little bit of time on later is the we tend to call it blue-green algae blooms or cyanobacteria and really what it is it's the toxins that are produced by cyanobacteria that can cause some pretty significant death loss if they're present. So just to approach this issue a little bit I mean one of the we need to provide some context for how you avoid some of these some of those issues that we just talked about from taking place and you know obviously it's providing fresh water and we know that's not always the easiest thing to do but with many of the programs we have today many ranches and operations have upgraded their watering facilities whether it's underground piping whether it's hauling water but the important part of this slide is that when we exclude livestock for example from a water hole or dug out whatever we want to call it when we exclude the livestock and so they're they're not dropping manure and urine and all those different things right in the water then it makes that water much more fresh if you will it reduces E. coli if we treat for bacteria at the same time we can reduce not only E. coli but obviously other bacterial pathogens as well in a significant way and when we're using this fresh water that we're pumping we're not we're not taking all and exclude the livestock we're not taking all those nutrients that are involved in runoff like nitrogen and phosphorus and even for that matter in this what we call the total dissolved solids category so providing hot fresh water excluding the livestock from that pond that we're pumping from can really make a difference on on water quality you know this is a really interesting slide when I looked at this slide and this is Miranda's slide and I thanked her for putting this in because if you think about this let me just focus on clean water increases average daily gains let's look at the calf slide there 0.3 to 0.33 pounds per head per day this slide indicates to us that having clean water is just as important as implanting a calf in the spring I mean that's that's the level of significance that clean water can can bring to these livestock and for yearlings that are running on grass you know a little bit less but they're bigger animals anyway so anywhere from 0.18 to 0.24 pounds per day that is a huge improvement in gain just from clean water alone so and part of that when cattle have access to clean water what happens the intake they eat more okay and cows will milk more and thus calves will gain better so a very important slide to ponder so now we're going to move into what is drought impact in terms of water first thing we'll talk about is availability of water and then we're going to talk into talk about the most common quality concerns that we see in the northern great plains and so that would be total dissolved solids or TDS sulfates and cyanobacteria and so we talk about total dissolved solids that's the salt component or the mineral component of our water and in some places in North Dakota and it's natural it's naturally occurring in our aquifers it's naturally part of our geology so we have a higher risk especially in the southwest part of the state of having high levels of total dissolved solids and also sulfates which is one of those salts that can be toxic and we'll talk about those the specifics of these a little bit further the other thing is that cyanobacteria when we have prolonged dry periods it supports the growth of that that bacteria or that algae that can be toxic looking at our most recent drought here in North Dakota in the peak of our 2017 flash drought at the end of July you see that a lot of the state the western part of state was hit hardest by this drought was reported being very short on surface water and so as we think about this and prepare for a drought we want to think about strategies to make sure that we have adequate water for our livestock out on our range and pasture land and not only is this important just for the livestock having enough water and that quality of water but also it opens up access to forage resources that we might not be able to use otherwise if we don't have water in those in those pastures are on that in that range land anymore and so what are some of those options for making sure that we can still have access to those resources and so thinking about the short-term solutions as we're maybe preparing for a drought this year is as much as we don't want to do it hauling water is an option I know people grown about it but if you can't use a whole pasture because you have no water you're losing a lot more than you are at the expense of time of hauling water and so if we're going to be hauling water we need to think about tanks and barriers to keep those livestock out of those tanks whether those are or another option is portable tanks you can see a picture of a portable tank option on this slide another thing that we sometimes don't consider is clean hauling equipment sometimes we want to use old spray tanks to haul water and we might have issues with the residues in those tanks so making sure whatever you're using to haul that equipment is also safe and clean um some producers I know have used temporary pipelines as well as temporary tanks or portable tanks and so that's another option that we can use and then the last is if we don't have the water there and we don't have another a short-term option we might have to move livestock to a place that water is readily available um I don't know if anyone's on that's use any of those solutions but it'll be interesting I think those of us on would be interested to hear what you've done in past drought so if you want to put those in the drought or in the chat box and we can see some other solutions um looking long term you know putting in that infrastructure I think when we talk about rangeland and grazing infrastructure the biggest bang for your buck comes out of adding water infrastructure it opens up so many different things for you whether it's additional grazing resources um flexibility in your grazing system and obviously we seen in the from the slide earlier that those gains too so it pays for itself in the long run and there's a lot of data that supports that um so whether that's connecting to a well real water are installing pipelines and the infrastructure that goes with that and there's lots of programs out there that will help you um cover help with cost share for these type of this type of infrastructure so now we're going to move in and chat a little bit more about the specific water quality concerns that that we see during drought so again that reflection on 2017 drought and this is just from North Dakota um but if you look on the right there's a or there's a photo from an article and that's from Canada but we seen this was pretty common during that 2017 flash drought in the northern great plains is there was lots of report of livestock death due to to high sulfates in our in water sources and it caught a lot of people off guard it wasn't something they were prepared for and so thinking about that um is what we're hoping people will report more prepared this year if if our drought does progress um so as part of our efforts with an extension to help address the drought and provide solutions we promoted a lot of water screening and testing and so our county agents in 2017 to that drought um collected 126 field tests or field screenings of water so they used a TDS meter similar to this one here which is probably difficult for your see but a handheld TDS meter they're around $100 you can get a decent one to screen to do a field screening and if that field screening reached a certain threshold then water samples were collected we collected 94 water samples and of those 82 of them were toxic for two livestock and the livestock had to be to be moved or another water source had to be developed or found and Jerry you want to talk about some of the other impacts we've seen in 2017 yeah just briefly uh i'm still focused on that sulfate in the water in Saskatchewan cattle and so it can happen in North Dakota as well obviously and so I think Miranda's driving at it we need to pay attention to our water sources especially in these dugouts we get under dry conditions and they get and dehydration occurs in the in these dugouts and now we got more totals total dissolved solids than we ever thought could happen and that's obviously what happened up there in that Saskatchewan the flip side of it is a little bit that when cattle are deprived of water and I actually had this happen to us with one cow a couple years ago we moved a group of cows and one got left behind with I don't know how it happened but with three calves and she went a couple days without water and she was very thirsty so what happens is when cattle don't get enough water and then they're all of a sudden allowed to have water then you can actually get into a salt toxicity issue where the brain actually swells a little bit as well so it it can work both ways and especially when you got heat and high salt content in the water they're not drinking enough it's hot they need to drink more and so it's it's different from sulfates just pure sulfates but salt toxicity can be an issue as well and I also had another case a couple years ago where the cattle had no access to salt this is not so much with water but had no access to salt for a long period of time and then they were fed ad lib just put out a bunch of salt blocks and into a certain number of cattle and we had actually had salt toxicity in those cattle as well because they ate so much salt because they were craving for it so these things can lead to death and cattle that you might not expect so this is it these tables that we talk about are always so interesting and they're not always uniform across every reference you might find but these are certainly recommendations that not not we but that have come up as some guidelines for what we think is safe or not safe so if you're looking at TDS again total dissolved solids and like Miranda defined that for us at the beginning usually we're okay we should be fine when it's less than 3000 when we go to three to five thousand it we probably still aren't going to see a whole lot going on but what you might start seeing when you creep above there you'll you'll have cattle that become loose I mean this it's almost like an osmotic diarrhea that occurs when they're trying to get it rid of these salts it drags fluid out with it as well and so that's when we start getting into trouble and then even beyond that especially if you get heat and cattle are craving water they're going to drink water that's even higher in TDS and that can that's what I was referring to earlier about causing brain damage so over the past couple of years extension agents across North Dakota have been monitoring water sources with a handheld TDS meter and this is some of the data from 2020 just looking at the difference between water sources and so the blue bars are surface water and the red bars are groundwater and you see on average that our groundwater is lower than our surface water in total dissolved solids and then also it remains there's less fluctuation throughout for month to month throughout that grazing period in comparison to our surface waters and so one thing that happens with during the drought with our total dissolved solids is that salt component of our water is always there but when that water evaporates it becomes more concentrated so we see a fluctuation we can see a fluctuation in those amounts of salts during the drought scenario as they increase it's similar to having a glass of salt water and the water dissolves and you still have that salt residue in there because the salts are still going to be there they're not going to dissolve with or evaporate with the atmosphere and this chart it may seem a little skewed this is same from the same project looking at just surface water alone I'm going to point out that this high here in June was just one source so that source was not one one site really threw this off and that's this that site wasn't monitored throughout the grazing period because after we had this really high reading it was it was astronomical but after we had that high reading then the animals were removed from there so we did not continue monitoring that site and so I know we think that we get a little rain and some runoff that if we had poor water quality early in the season that that's going to help and it will help to an extent but it's not going to have a dramatic influence on that overall water quality necessarily so it makes it really important that we continue to monitor throughout that grazing period so how do we monitor I talked about one of the tools and I recommend is using a TDS or electric conductivity meter to screen our water samples or waters and they're affordable it's easy to use and it can give you a baseline and instead of sending a sample to a lab every every month or you can go out as you're checking pastures check your water as well if you have a reading that's over 4,500 parts per million since there can be some variability and some things in our water that confounds the readings within with these meters we want we recommend you submit to a lab for further analysis and the one thing that I really stress is before you start using one for the for the year make sure that it's calibrated properly and that you're getting proper readings off of that and we have some videos that can with it that with an extension and publication that steps you through that process also most meters you have a calibration solution that they come with that that'll help you through that process as well and just as a rule of thumb is that sulfates with when we're looking at our TDS sulfates are typically 60 percent of the TDS but that's not necessarily the case everywhere that's just what we've seen in North Dakota and so I it's and it's not a hard and fast rule so I don't I would there's other methods we can use to look at those sulfates a little closer yes it's to zero in the sulfate issue a little bit more and remember that they are component of total dissolved solids but sulfates by themselves present some unique issues in terms of the health of the cattle and again these are guidelines cattle and sheep total sulfur in the diet should be around no greater than actually 0.4 percent and then we also have different sources of sulfur comes from not only the diet but the water as well I underlined that concentrate 85 percent concentrate ration for a reason and that's because as a rumen pH decreases which it does with a concentrate diet the amount of h2s or hydrogen sulfide gas and the rumen gas cap increases and so that's why the the parts per million and the the diet may be a little bit less in sulfur just so we avoid the those bacteria that that convert that sulfate sulfates into h2s gas so it might it's a little bit different depending on what diet they are and again these are just recommendations concerning sulfates alone less than 500 parts per million in calves and less than 1000 parts per million in mature cattle but again depending on the diet I just want to talk about specifically about some of the issues surrounding it one of the things that we were pretty sure what happens with some of these high sulfate water sources is that molybdenum which is another element combines with sulfate and then it it messes up our messes up livestock's ability to absorb copper and even release copper and so one of the symptoms you might see in it in a group of animals that there might be high sulfates and you're not really notice anything anything but you might start experiencing some issues associated with copper deficiencies and that's health related immune status related even sometimes coloring of cattle is related to copper deficiencies one of the things we talked about and this is not written in stone necessarily but black cattle tend to get a little bit of a reddish tinge to their hair coats now that doesn't tell us that that's copper deficient but it's one of those signs that can result when we have this situation with high sulfates and it combines with molybdenum the other thing too would be loose stools and then finally when some of these water water issues become high enough in part for million with sulfates we actually see central nervous system symptoms and I think the next slide do I have a picture of that I think yeah so just looking at an animal with central nervous system problems you can't always make a diagnosis I mean we have everything from rabies to lead toxicity to thiamine deficiencies to nervous coxidiosis so we're not always sure but and when we when we look at an animal and we recognize make the diagnosis that it's something wrong in their central nervous system which is obviously the brain and we we know that there may be being fed water or or some byproducts that are high in sulfates some of the things that we we think about quickly are a disease we call polioencephalomalacia and that just means that parts of the brain are actually undergoing a little bit of necrosis and what go to the next slide Miranda this is just a little bit of a schematic to how we think this actually takes place now there there may be some that don't necessarily believe in this inhalation theory but when high sulfates are taken in it's it's reduced to it ends up being converted into hydrogen sulfide gas and we talked about that gas cap earlier and so what animals do the rumen and animals naturally eruptate and so they eruptate hydrogen sulfate gas sulfide gas and it's believed that some of that gas is actually inhaled with that eruptation process and goes to the lungs which is rapidly absorbed and hydrogen sulfide gas is extremely toxic to cells in particularly cells that have a high oxygen requirement like the central nervous system and that's why you tend to see central nervous system problems associated with with hydrogen sulfide gas that we have characterized as polioencephalomalacia there's another term we use it's the same term but it's a little bit different thiamine deficiencies also can result in polioencephalomalacia just a little bit different pathophysiology with that one but this one specifically related to sulfates okay this is a and i i intended to put a normal brain on here this is an abnormal brain where i've taken that brain and i've just cut it in half uh from front to back so it's what we call a sagittal section of the brain so you can see all these little divisions in the brain and what what you should see as you go to the outside there in one layer that can't there that layer that layer should be much more developed much thicker and we're actually getting necrosis it's called cortical necrosis of the brain and so that that we now understand why we see some symptoms related to central nervous system disorder because that's what it is so anyway i just thought you'd be interested in looking at brain that that was diagnosed with polioencephalomalacia right so how do we monitor sulfates again the best way is sending a sample to the lab but but a nice easy way that we can a tool that we can have on hand is sulfates test strips you can get a packet of 100 of them for around 40 dollars on amazon i've seen them and so they're they're accessible and it gives you a range it's like using a litmus test strip in chemistry when you're in high school so it gives you a different color depending on the range you're in and we recommend that if you're in that range around that 800 if it's over if it's over 800 parts per million to submit to lab for further analysis just to get a more accurate number for that the other thing we are we're going to talk about is cyanobacteria and this last year we had a number of cyanobacteria blooms across the state of North Dakota and and they started happening a little bit earlier we had warmer weather we think maybe some of the flush of the fall flooding the previous year brought nutrients into some of our water sources and so what causes the cyanobacteria is excess nutrients in that water source specifically nitrogen and phosphorus and kind of like your salts once they're there they're very difficult to get rid of especially the that phosphorus component because that ties into that the soil particles within that water source or the and so once those get stirred up it turns stirs up that phosphorus and it's becomes re-suspended in that water source and so it's very difficult to get rid of those nutrients without putting in some type of perennial buffer excluding livestock because they're adding nutrients as well as just nutrients that are coming in from runoff and so once you have had a cyanobacteria bloom we really want you to monitor those sources closely blooms can develop very rapidly under the right conditions and so we see those hot dry conditions if we have a shallower water source we used to say that around around July the 4th of July is when we would start to see them but we've been certain we've been seeing them mid-June the last couple years so it's monitoring earlier and this this site in particular I was out doing some field research and one day we're no there was not bloom the next day we came back had lunch at the spot and the this bloom was present so they develop very very rapidly and can be toxic to a wide range of animals and humans yeah that's right Miranda and sometimes they're not as dramatic as this even sometimes they can fool you a little bit in fact a couple years ago I remember Lake Erie that that big lake we usually don't see it in big ponds of water do we Miranda we just so I don't know exactly what's happening I guess the message is don't think you're safe just because you have a huge area that your cattle water in because it can occur in large bodies of water as well and it doesn't have to look this bad for you to have a bloom and what we're talking about is these algae we call them blue green algae because that's the color it looks like but it takes certain species of these cyanobacteria to produce toxins and so the time and the the unfortunate part of these this toxicity that you rarely get a chance to even see a sick animal they're usually dead and it's neurotoxins and hepatotoxins which means toxic to the liver and neuro obviously means toxic to the brain so the symptoms are usually dead cattle and if you have even an inkling that there's been an an algae bloom that looks something like this or not even this bad be real concerned the other thing too is that other mammals can be harmed as well dogs in particular human beings so this is nothing to ignore it's a it's a critical issue to always be aware of in these bodies of water that are livestock are watering out of so unfortunately because there's so many different type of algae and not all of them produce a toxin visual observation is really the best way to monitor for a cyanobacteria bloom there are tests for it for the toxins they're very expensive and there's not very many labs that do them I think the the one that we we would use would be in Florida so it's it's pretty spendy the veterinary diagnostic lab at NDSU can look at they'll take if you send in a sample they'll they'll look at it for the presence of the algae species that produce those toxins but we don't know a toxin level that are if that toxin is for sure present we just know the species that produce that toxin are present but due to how rapid these toxins can act it's we don't it's you don't want to take the risk so what we typically recommend is if you see a bloom or you think you have a bloom remove and remove those livestock from from that pasture or exclude them for that water source so they can't access that water source and and utilize a different water source until at least until you can get it tested and know what you're dealing with and unfortunately there's no research on consumption on intake levels of toxins and thresholds so it's really a guessing game and it's not it's not a game that we like to play with I guess so if you are wanting to sample a water source if you've screened it and you have a high TDS or sulfates or you think you have a cyanobacteria bloom there's we have developed this water livestock water testing guidelines to step you through the process this one also has some of the common labs that are in North Dakota and some in the pricing for those labs and what you would ask for because some of them have different screenings that they would use and so we want to be sure that we're sampling we're sending in enough water that we're sending it in a clean plastic bottle so if you're going to use a bottle that you have a water you want to use a water bottle we don't want to use a pot bottle or a power aid bottle because those have electrolytes and things and then that could throw off the throw off the readings and if you're sending a sample and for cyanobacteria we're collecting that sample we want to use caution we want to use make sure we're wearing gloves when we're collecting that and those samples because the bacteria will break down we need to send those overnight on ice and so when we're sending those samples we want to think about timing we don't want to send a sample to the lab and send it out on Friday we want to wait until Monday to send that out so that they get it in a timely fashion and the back and they can still conduct the tests or the analysis that they need to conduct to tell you if those if those toxins could be present and when you get a water testing report back they all look a little different the things is the way they're doing a water test for livestock that we would we want to include or look at is you know the total dissolved solids the sulfates pH you can do nitrates as well nitrates typically aren't a huge issue but they can be if you're next to a place that might have high runoff from from cropland or are from tile drainage potentially there's that potential there so you can you can also run that and then and those would show up this is what you would get so this is from the veterinary diagnostic lab at NDSU of our sample IDs the nitrate total dissolved solids sulfate and pH and this was these samples were taken in southwest North Dakota I think in 2017 is when these were done and so you see that we have some pretty high levels of total dissolved solids and of sulfates on some of these waters sources so alternate water sources needed to be looked into for the for several of these locations this is from a different laboratory you see it looks a little bit a lot or quite a bit different it's a little bit harder to find things on this one compared to the one from veterinary diagnostic lab but so we have our pH here and they had other minerals looked at as well we have our sulfates here and then our total dissolved solids and this one was for a confined a feedlot and so the sulfates well wouldn't be a concern if we're grazing in a grazing situation they might be impacting performance here because of the that lower threshold when we're on a high concentrate diet so just kind of in summary things to think about as we prepare for this grazing season or is you know if we think we have water quality concern we want to restrict or eliminate access to that water until we've at least until we've had a test taken and develop an alternate source if possible I'm providing and using alternate water sources if those tests come back and they're high in total dissolved solids or sulfates and in the long term you know looking into developing a water source that's not only going to improve your water quality but your livestock performance yeah just to follow up a little Miranda too and environmental conditions change so dramatically throughout the grazing season so heat and humidity become an issue the hydration and some of these stock ponds become an issue so it'd be nice to at least have a plan in place what am I going to do if I think I'm getting in trouble and that's what Miranda's trying to portray and communicate here what's what's your backup plan in case things don't go well this summer we hope and pray they do we hope and pray that we'll get some rain but and that makes a difference for us that this water quality issue can't be overemphasized yeah especially when we consider that we had some poor water quality this fall a lot of sites in North Dakota and we had little to no runoff with the snow cover that we have currently so there's not going to be an improvement this spring is so we want to be testing right away this spring before we're putting livestock out on some of these some of these pastures and using these water sources and so and I think we can open up for questions if any if there are any questions and there's jerry's and my contact information before we head into questions I'll just kind of do a quick reminder that our next webinar again is next Thursday at one central time and we'll be talking about herd management and reduction strategies thank you there are a few questions hi this is carl hoppy I there's a few questions that came up in the chat box as well as the question and answer but um one that I like to repeat for you is what might be the epigenetic concerns in the cow bull or future breeding stuff if forced to consume water with tds levels up to 3 000 parts per million did I hear that question right carl say that again what might be the epigenetic concerns in the cow bull or future breeding stock if tds levels are up to 3 000 yeah I got the answer for that one we don't know I mean you know think about this we are just beginning to understand a little bit better about genetic expression and there's a there's an environmental influence on genetic expression and when it comes to water quality alone I would expect there would be one but I I don't know the significance of it I don't know what what levels it would impact genetic expression what you're talking about so but undoubtedly there there is an influence we're just not sure specifically what the impact or what the specific answer would be as to the impact today but yes it's a concern definitely is there's a question that would go to Miranda perhaps and that is where do I go to to get cost share for water developments okay there's several several opportunities ones for that would be more widespread would be nrcs your local soil conservation districts um I know in North Dakota depending where you're at you might qualify for some programs through the the game and fish through the one that I can think of specifically might be the save your save our lakes program and that one I know in some instances can provide 100 cost share so that's a really good program if you can utilize that those are the ones that come to mind right away I do know that some of our NGOs such as ducks unlimited and I don't think pheasants forever has anything that would cover water at this time but those they they might have an opportunity to so definitely reach out to to those folks and don't be afraid to see what they have and usually your soil conservation districts are probably the good place to start because they're aware of those other opportunities and work with those other folks great here's another question so does livestock water well does water quality affect all species in other words sheep and horses are they more susceptible or less susceptible that's the question that was asked um well they're all susceptible to it I mean mammals have kind of the same susceptibility when it comes to these water quality issues I would say that the sulfate issue is perhaps a little bit unique to ruin in animals just because of the production of hydrogen sulfide gas and that and how that's absorbed so that'd be one of those issues that may be unique to ruminants but the other things we talked about cyanobacteria total dissolved solids just water deprivation in in general would certainly fit other species uh there there's we got a few questions and here's another one that talks about a spring well development it has some ruddy excuse me and a spring well development it has some rusty red mass floating in the water tank uh is that safe to drink the cattle don't appear to be having any problems or or better yet what is it is an iron bacteria what can you explain any of that yeah so we actually ran into that this summer um I know one of our county agents worked with the producer that had something like that in that case it was an iron bacteria and that's most likely with that red color but if you're unsure send it send a test a a sample in for further analysis also taking pictures that's helpful when you're sending something in or or reaching out to your local extension agent for more information because that helps us better diagnose what's going on or your veterinarian if you're working with them Carl just let me follow up a little bit with that and in some of these big tanks even that are fed from well water you you'll get algae growth in there a lot of it but if you think about it we shouldn't have some of the contributing factors that go into this algae bloom presumably not high nitrates and not high phosphorus when we were taking it from a well as evidenced by some Miranda's work with well water so you'll get algae growth in some of these well water tanks but it seems doesn't doesn't seem to be harmful at all we just go ahead and take a fork and clean it out every so often and there's some pretty good resources that can step give you some solutions for preventing algae growth in those water tanks one of the simplest ones and that's relatively safe is using household bleach in those tanks are you know some people use goldfish there's there's also some solutions there but like Jerry said that with with those it's not a cyanobacteria concern typically it's just it's just an eligible growth in those tanks I have to ask will the Clorox solution hurt the goldfish well I wouldn't recommend putting them in there together probably you might have some dead fish if you put that in I did have a comment here on copper sulfate that appears to be used a one time in the past is that still viable or is that something that's not recommended now or it really depends on your state and their regulations in North Dakota it we want to be careful because it is a regulated substance and so we want to make sure that we're not putting it on a water body that connects to other surface waters because it kills off other living organisms in that water and not just that bacteria also we run into issues where people use it improperly and I've had a couple years ago I had a producer in one of the counties that had to redig his dug out because yet he added too much copper sulfate and so we want to make sure that we're using it properly the veterinary toxicologist Michelle Mostrom also said you know with caution that she's had many instances where because it kills the bacteria the toxins are actually released when that bacteria dies and so if you put your animals in there too soon we can actually have more death loss because of of that toxicity I think do we run into especially in large bodies of water I mean just the amount you would need was is it gets to be insurmountable so yeah I it wouldn't be a solution I'd look to so for cleaning out the small waters of the drops of the small tanks and use hydrogen peroxide too or is that not something I'd I'd more like Miranda I'd probably just use bleach and you know in the feed yards for example you don't even really need to do that you just take a brush and brush all the crud out as much as you can drain the tank and go on and you know it's practiced much more in the feed yards even sometimes those of us that have automatic waters in our cow herd we kind of ignore those things and we go when we look at them once or twice a year for how clean they are about grosses is out a little bit so I guess I'm reminding our coca producers that even those that aren't used very often can get pretty unsightly and probably the water isn't as nice and fresh as we think it should be and there is another question here it says can water source lead to kidney stones or urinary calculus can it can lead to Uralis yeah and that's assuming the content of the water the minerals in the water not unnecessary a lack there of water yeah or maybe it did include that but urinary calculus can be a problem but I don't think it's related to water source it's mostly related to diet I'll just shorten my answer somewhat did you hear that that I heard thank you very much thanks Carl for moderating this session and thanks Miranda and thanks for everyone that's on and this is a recorded session so you can go back and and look at it again perhaps even during the summertime when it's uh environmental conditions have changed so thank you so much for being part of our program and I'll hand it over back over to Miranda as we as we proceed I guess the big take-home home that we we have here is just you know monitoring and there's some really simple tools to make it easy for monitoring your water quality throughout this the grazing season and I I mean whether or not we the drought progresses I think that it's valuable to continue monitoring our water and the other and and it's pretty simple and it's pretty quick cheap tests affordable so it's well worth the value the other thing I want to remind those those of you that are in North Dakota is that the majority of our extension agents have a TDS meter and several of them will also have sulfate test strips in their office and they have have sample kits to help you collect water if you want help with that so if you need assistance with any of this reach out to them and they're a great resource for you as we move forward through through the growing and grazing season