Does anyone know what size trough I should go with? Any recommendations?

We did put in a water trough, complete with rocks inside and out, and it is being used.

http://peabody304.com/deer_fawns.jpg

The deer on our property are anything but tame. If it weren't for the wildlife camera (Stealth Cam) we setup while we're away, we would never see the deer.

Don't worry about starstruck - he sometimes likes to raise cain, especially if bored. I'm thinking he was joking, but maybe we should ask for a sarcasm sign on these forums.

That little doe with ribs sticking out surely looks like she appreciates the time and money you spent and hardly looks "tame", not to mention the speckly cute cute little twins. That's a mighty good thing you did in this terrible drought. We sure could do with more folks like you out here.

Another option on how to provide some water to wildlife can be found at http://haysmn.org/downloads/currentnews.pdf . Page 3 shows an inexpensive contraption that is self supporting and can be placed pretty much anywhere. The drinking bowl is not large (a pint or two) and is fed by gravity from the 50 gal barrel. A standard drip irrigation emitter (Home Depot or Lowe’s) controls the water to 1 or 2 drops per second. You don’t need a lot of volume to support the wildlife – they receive most of their water from what they eat. Deer will always eat the young, green vegetation first because it contains moisture and more protein than mature grass. When they can’t get that, they go after our gardens, which are generally watered and maintained.

Predators are in the same situation; their prey is generally alive and contains moisture.

These critters are not like cows and horses that are fed dry hay and feed – our domestic animals need a large amount of water just to digest their food.

The horse troughs work great, especially with the rocks for smaller animals to escape. But there is the issue of mosquitoes - These creatures are a nuisance to your neighbors; they pose a health risk to humans and to our song bird population. You may consider a few Mosquito fish (Gambusia affinis) in the tank – the females prefer mosquito larvae and have a large appetite. There are also some plants that will help control the algae in stagnant water.

While I have the soapbox – consider that Mother Nature knows best. The wildlife go through cycles based on the weather. There is not much we can do about that; this is the part of nature that deals with population control and the overall health of the species.

If you feed your birds in stationary feeders and provide water – please clean the feeders before re filling, likewise the bird baths. Not much different from us humans – the places where we congregate is where illnesses and disease will spread.

Please don’t feed corn to the deer – it contains less than 1/3 of the protein of their natural diet. Also, deer corn is not required to pass the same quality tests required for feed corn (domestic animals). There can be issues of toxins from mold, chemical residues, etc. Another similar situation: please do not feed bread to the birds – they can’t digest it. Humans like to eat popcorn; but we would not be healthy if it was the major part of our diet.

Since weather is so hot, and we do not get out there every week to refill the trough, I added a float valve to the tank this weekend. Since I did not want to risk some sort of failure that would drain my rainwater, I did not attach it to one of our big storage tanks.

So I put a 55 gallon barrel some distance away and attached the float valve to the barrel. It seemed to work when we tested it. I will be interested to see what the water level is this weekend when I head out there.
http://peabody304.com/trough_with_float_valve.JPG
That thing floating in the water is a sack of barley straw; it's supposed to help keep the tank clean. I admit it was an impulse purchase. We'll see if it works or not.

I've not seen mosquitoes in the tank yet. I'll look carefully this weekend.

At some point, I'm probably going to add another trough. We have a shed that I'm going to add gutters to so I can collect rain in barrels and use that to supply another trough.

The doe and her two fawns made a couple more visits to the trough last week.
http://peabody304.com/doe_and_two_fawns_7-23-09_sm.JPG

I've got a video if anyone is interested. We saw that our bird feeder were being emptied overnight, so we set up the wildlife camera to see what was going on. This video runs about 1 minute.
http://peabody304.com/Racoon_and_deer_at_bird_feeder2.wmv

-peabody
edited for spelling.