North Central US | cjohnson - 3/2/2026 21:34
I am putting in a new water system under NRCS cost share contract. They wanted fiberglass water troughs. Mine are 1000 gallon, 10 foot diameter. I am concerned that cattle with break them and that I need to protect them in some way. Does anyone have experience with these? Do they break easy? How is best way to provide protection?
The NRCS usually has their specification for protection on NRCS projects. Anyways:(picture)
View from above. The reddish colored circle is supposed to be perfectly round and the triangle is supposed to be an equilateral triangle.
Reddish circle is the tank.
Yellow triangle is the protection.
The protection consists of:
3 posts, one at each point of the triangle. Heavy Wood, like corner posts or 2 7/8 pipe. These 3 posts must be basically kissing the tank.
3 boards at least 2x10 size. The boards attach on the outside of the corner posts. All sides are equal sized. If using pipe, weld heavy hinges to the pipe and then bolt the wood through the hinges.
Then pile your local erosion resistant material of choice, here we use Scoria, around the tank, so only about a foot and a half to two feet is above ground if you want calves to drink easily, if it just yearlings and cows, halfways up the tank to start is fine. A company in South Dakota makes a "stock step" for putting around tanks that is NRCS program approved.
We have 30+ year old fiberglass tanks that are still going. After that however you end up putting bentonite in the bottoms before giving up after a few years and putting in a new tank.
For some reason I don't have a picture of any of our tanks on this phone. I did find a stock photo on Google however. The same idea, but they used incredibly light materials there. Where the posts go across the tank we have the 2x10s or 2x12s, vertically so it looks like a bluff to a cow if that makes sense.
If you have to haul them yourself, you stack them together then haul them upside down. Do not throw your STRAP hook across, the floors will not take a sharp impact like that. DO NOT CHAIN them.
Otherwise for how tough they are, if the base is good and flat and packed well, cows can usually walk through them without issue. We've had cows shoved into them, under the triangle protection thing, and it doesn't hurt the walls. We've also had them freeze solid and the only casualty was the plumbing filling the tank. They are tough as long as they can't get shoved around.
Edited by GS2 3/3/2026 07:52
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Protection for fiberglass water trough
