Cows have a significant water intake, especially when they are lactating. As a general guideline, they consume between 50 and 150 liters of water per day, with higher amounts for dairy cows during the summer months.

Growing up on a dairy farm in South Lanarkshire, I had firsthand experience with cows and their water consumption. Our farm had fields with streams, which provided convenient water sources for the young cattle. The milking cows would come into the byre twice a day for milking, and each stall had a water bowl that the cows could activate by pushing a paddle with their noses. During spring and autumn, the cows would obtain enough water while being milked and from the wet grass (we did get a lot of rain in the West of Scotland). However, during the peak of summer, they required additional water. To address this, my dad had set up water troughs in the fields, often using old cast iron baths. As part of our tasks, we would fill barrels and containers from the tap, load them onto a tractor, and then fill the troughs in the fields. By the time I turned 13, I could lift a 5-gallon plastic container onto a trailer by myself, and my mum and I could team up to lift the 10-gallon steel milk churns. By the time I was 18, I could manage the 10-gallon containers on my own. The following year, my dad even mounted a thousand-gallon tank on an old trailer, which was quite a feat!

Our farm had a poor connection to the mains water supply. In fact, during summer, when the gardener in the neighboring mansion watered the greenhouse, we would have no water at all! To overcome this issue, my dad purchased a pump, and we often drove down to a nearby stream to fill the tank from there.

Here’s another story about my dad. He bred his own replacement cows and wanted to keep the daughters of his best cows. Every three weeks, we would weigh the milk produced by each cow, both in the morning and evening, using a scale suspended from the rafters in the byre. Twice a year, my dad would calibrate the scale using a standard bucket and known volumes of water (remembering that “a pint of cold water weighs a pound and a quarter” in the Imperial system). I still recall the excitement I felt when, at the age of six, I was entrusted with the task of writing down the weights.

My dad had an interesting story related to breeders of pedigree dairy cattle. These breeders needed lactation records, which were typically recorded by unbiased individuals known as Milk Recorders. One of my dad’s cousins worked as a Milk Recorder for some time. She shared with my dad that it was not uncommon for her to record the production of a particularly impressive cow, only to see the milk being emptied into the cow’s trough for it to drink. It turns out that some dairy cows enjoy drinking milk as well!