Having bought two large Rubbermaid water troughs last year I was determined to get them installed and the heaters connected before winter arrived.

One of the problems with this size of trough is that some alpacas just love to get their feet in the trough. Which of course fills the clean water in the trough with mud and goodness knows how many parasites from the poo pile.

So I built a concrete base added concrete blacks and set up the trough complete with heater and electrical connection.... we then set about trimming some toe nails on the boys and when I had finished I walked to the barn door and there was one of the boys stood on his hind legs with his front feet in the trough....Damn!

Back to the drawing board....

In the end I made a simple plywood lid to restrict the drinking space available which of course defeats the idea of a large trough in the first place. But it does keep their feet out...



Large troughs are not good news with alpacas, but at least I will have ice free water this winter and alpacas do not like to drink really cold water either so we should all be happy!

If you do put a heater in a plastic trough of this type remember to also fit an earth wire that connects the actual water to earth. Then if you get a fault on the heater it will trip the circuit.

Adrian Stewart