From the magazine

Any creative ways to fill a tank that isn’t reachable by a hose? One of our members posed these questions in our Facebook group, and we appreciated the clever, helpful responses.

Scrub the tank with bleach weekly, rinse well, and add a couple of teaspoons of bleach to the water. My tanks are in the bright sun with summer temps in the 90s-100s. I have less algae in the metal tank than the plastic one. — Stephanie Peck

I have a small freezer in my feed room. Twice a day I take a frozen two-liter bottle and toss it in the trough. I put the old bottle back in the freezer. Keeping the water slows the growth of algae. — Melissa Sandness 

2 capfuls of straight bleach in my filled-up tanks usually gets my tanks through 4-5 days in the GA heat and sunshine until I have to clean & refill. It won’t hurt them, we drink chlorinated water. — Nan Buckner

Dump, bleach, scrub every few days or at least once a week. Please don’t add fish. Seriously. Let them drink it down, dump it, spray bleach and scrub. Refill. As for no hose, consider getting the “camping” bladders. I have one for my horse trailer to be able to haul “home water” with us. Note: This requires that you have a gator, tractor, or truck to haul as you sure as heck don’t want to be doing it with a wheel barrow. And maybe consider putting in a hydrant so you don’t have to keep hauling. My two cents. — Sarah Young

A filled tank lasts about three days for my herd, so I just scrub before filling every time and there’s never any algae issue but it’s also mostly in the shade. — Katy McFarland

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