Wildlife Water

Now that the days are cooler, I decided to get out there and do some work!

We bought a small rainwater collector from RainwaterGuzzlers at the Rainwater Revival last weekend. The company is owned by two of our fellow Master Naturalists, Randy Garst and Tom Hausler. The guzzler is a little smaller than the one I built a few years ago but the idea is the same: a small metal roof collector and a water tank and water dish. It makes a good source of supplemental water for wildlife.

Randy delivered it on Wednesday and we set it up near one of the deer blinds on our property. It's also near some old cattle water troughs and I hope to eventually have it supplying water to one of them.

Last weekend I also bought a small 125 gallon water tank that I can use to take water out to the wildlife water guzzlers to make up for the lack of rain. You can see it in the pickup bed in this photo.

I  filled the water tank at our house and then drove out to the two guzzlers. I have a small electric water transfer pump which runs off the truck's 12V battery and used that to put water in the guzzler tanks.

I transferred about 45 gallons to the small guzzler and 205 gallons to the large water tank in two trips. Each trip took about 2 hours, including the time it took to fill the transfer water tank at our house, drive to the guzzlers and transfer the water. I spent about 4 hours this weekend working on this.

I'm hoping the wildlife gets good use from them. The next step is to put a motion-activated camera by one or both of them and see who's coming in for a drink.