Farm dam water needs active management to stay clean and productive. Problems arise from waste, sludge, and excess nutrients entering the aquatic system. Effective care involves use of aeration, probiotic treatments, and keeping livestock out. It also involves avoiding nasty chemicals like copper sulphates.
Summary
Everything You Need to Know About Farm Dam Water Quality
Managing a farm dam goes hand in hand with rearing livestock. You need to keep your water clean and healthy in order for your livestock to thrive.
But what exactly do you need to do? Let’s run through the most important things you need to do in order to achieve good water quality in your farm dam, as well as what you should avoid.
Why Water Quality Matters — And Why It Needs Active Management
I (Scotty Tucker) have been dealing with water for over 30 years, and one thing I’ve found is that, for whatever reason, people tend to think that water looks after itself. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
Think of it like this: if you’ve got a two-acre paddock and you left it alone for 5, 10, 20 years and did nothing to it, it’s going to be an absolute mess. It’s going to be unproductive; it’s not going to be doing what you want it to do, that’s for sure.
It’s the same thing with your dam. When you ignore it, it turns into an absolute mess. Dams need to be able to process waste; they need the good beneficial bacteria to get in there and clean up the crap. Sometimes you’ve got to deal with algae and weeds.
But for use with livestock, you’ve got to make sure the water is in optimal condition to give you optimal growth rates for your animals.
It comes back to this question: is muddy water going to give your animals the best, most optimal growth rates? When animals drink their own waste, will that result in optimal growth rates? If your water is choked with weeds and algae, is that good for animals? And is that algae toxic?
These aren’t just scary questions; they’re the reality that I deal with every day in this industry, and they’re why water management matters.
The Truth About Barley Straw and Hay Bales
Working in this industry, I come across a lot of myths about how to manage water. Barley straw and hay bales are one of these.
Barley straw can be effective in managing algae, but only in very small ponds. How it works is like this: as it rots, it slowly releases trace elements of hydrogen peroxide, which acts as what’s called an algae stat, and it stops algae from growing.
But the reality is that you’ve got to put in a lot of bales of the stuff for it to work, and most importantly, if you do use barley straw, you’ve got to actually pull it out once it’s done. Otherwise, what you end up with is a bunch of rotting organic material that ultimately pollutes the water and feeds algae in the long run.
It doesn’t work well in large dam situations. Normal hay bales can be effective in some situations in terms of clarifying water a little bit… but it’s not going to clear a muddy dam. How it works is that it becomes a food source for microcrustaceans, microinvertebrates, and bacteria, and it’s actually these organisms that do the job. And there are much better ways of doing that. Biostim probiotics being the best solution.
Think of a Dam Like a Septic System
Ultimately, when it comes to cleaning water, think of it like a septic system. It’s actually bacteria that do the process of cleaning up the impurities that pollute water. In most cases, the cause of problems is organic material that comes from duck poop, leaf litter, things like that… and if you’re not fencing stock out of your dam, the main way it’s coming in is through all the manure.
Over time, that builds up, and the dam reaches a tipping point where it can no longer flush or dilute these pollutants. That’s when you’ll start getting explosive growth of algae and weeds, as well as blockages in irrigation systems. You get a thick layer of nutrient-rich sludge that feeds algae and weeds.
It becomes a problem.
The best thing you can do is keep those nutrients out of the system and prevent this from happening. The next best thing that you can do is treat your dam like a septic system. Then, you want to stimulate and increase the number of good bacteria that are going to digest all the nutrients in your dam and make them unavailable for algae.
The Power of Aeration
The “good” bacteria you need to clear out your dam are predominantly aerobic, so that’s why aeration is very important when it comes to improving water quality in your farm dam. Aeration gets oxygen circulating around your dam so that you get rid of “bad” anaerobic bacteria and replace them with “good” aerobic bacteria that do all the work.
Many farm dams lack power near their dams, so power concerns are one reason people may not consider aeration. That’s not a problem, because nowadays, there are many ways of aerating water. Solar and wind aerators are some of the more common and popular approaches.
Getting oxygen into the water makes such a big difference. Think about your local river. If you go up and there’s a bit of a billabong or a still stagnant area in the river, that’s where you find algae, it’s where you find odours, and it’s where you find problems.
If you’ve got the same river system up a bit further, where you’ve got ripples and river pebbles — and you’ve got bacteria living on the river pebbles with lots of oxygen — that’s where you get clean, clear, healthy water.
In your farm dam, you want to replicate Mother Nature. Aeration gives the bacteria the best chance to thrive by boosting oxygen availability. When you have enough bacteria, they’ll literally eat away at your problem.
Boosting Bacteria with Probiotics
Probiotic treatments like Biostim can boost the numbers of your good bacteria even further, and they’ll even work if you don’t have aeration. They do work better with aeration, but if you can do nothing else and you’ve got a lot of sludge and muck, get some of these pellets or tablets.
They’ll sink straight down to the bottom and degrade the waste that’s on the bottom.
Blue-Green Algae and Rapid Testing
A key issue from a farm dam point of view is that if you’re getting algal blooms and you’re worried if it’s blue-green algae. In that scenario, you really want to test it — and test it quickly — because you don’t want to lose livestock.
There’s various species of blue-green algae. A lot of them look like a paint slick on the water’s surface. Traditionally, what you’ve had to do is send water samples off to a lab, which is going to take about a week to 10 days to get the results back… and it’s going to cost you several hundred dollars.
These days, there are rapid-acting blue-green algae tests very similar to COVID tests, where you take your own water sample. It takes about 15 minutes, and it will tell you whether or not there are toxins in the water. This is massive — it puts control over testing back in your hands and gives you quick results you can use to make decisions.
With blue-green algae, if your test says there are no toxins and then you decide to go in and spray it and kill it with an algaecide, what may happen is that the algae might release its toxins. So if you are treating for toxic algae, it’s a good idea to do a before-and-after test. Then, don’t use the water until you get a negative test.
The Dangers of Copper Sulphate
I have one last thing to say about farm dam management: when it comes to algae control, don’t use copper sulphate. It’s cheap as chips, and it works very effectively, but it kills everything in water.
It’s like nuking everything — everything’s going to get wiped out, even the good stuff, and you’re right back at square one.
And the algae will probably come back before anything else does, and it’s going to take a long time to try and get that biological balance again.
Modern, chelated copper sulphate treatments are still available, but they’re not as toxic. Still, I recommend you don’t use these products.
Final Advice
My advice:
– Keep your animals out
– Stimulate the bacteria using beneficial bacteria and aeration
– Don’t bother with the hay bales
– Steer clear of nasty water treatments like copper sulphate
Want to Learn More?
If you’re interested in learning more about practical, effective water management, contact us. We can assess your site, offer FREE advice, and supply quality products and solutions to get your water back to health to ensure your livestock thrive.
