Wyo ranchers solve winter water problems
Shondah and Randall Otwell are ranchers in northeastern Wyoming near the small town of Oshoto in Crook County. Shondah is the fourth generation on the family ranch, located in high desert country where it gets hot in the summer and cold in winter.
Shondah noted her and Randall both left corporate jobs to return to the ranch in 2010 following her father’s passing – Shondah from a position as a network engineer, building businesses to support corporate computer networks and Randall from a job as a substation electrician.
While facing challenges that come with continuing the family legacy, Shondah and Randall have invented a unique solution to keeping stock water from freezing in Wyoming’s harsh winter weather.
A better idea
“When my father passed away in 2010 and we came back to take over the family ranch, one of our biggest challenges during the winter was stock water,” Shondah noted. “Our options were chopping ice or using electric stock tank heaters.”
However, as many can attest, chopping ice is difficult physical labor, while electric tank heaters are expensive to operate and only work marginally when weather is extremely cold.
“Trying to heat water in an outdoor environment is challenging, because it only heats the water directly around the element. The water further away will freeze, so we still had to break ice on our tanks,” she said.
Randall had the chore of trying to keep water tanks functional and eventually came up with a better idea.
“This all started one winter day in 2019 when I was trying to chop ice out of an 800-gallon tank,” Randall shared. “Even though it had an electric heater, the water was frozen. When I got the ice off and water going back into it, I went to the next stock tank and had the same issue.”
His frustration level was at the breaking point, and for a moment he thought it was time to sell the cows and move somewhere else.
Instead, Randall started doing some research and experimentation, making various devices in his shop.
He tried a little bit of everything and found a lot of things that didn’t work.
In fact, he spent four years looking for an effective, affordable method to manage winter ice and was determined to design something to keep water circulating at the tank’s surface.
Randall tried numerous devices – some froze solid, others moved insufficient water and some clogged with debris.
“I kept testing various innovations to figure things out,” he said. “One morning it was 22 below zero and it had been for several days. I called Shondah to come out to look at what I finally came up with.”
The rippler
Randall showed Rhonda two 800-gallon plastic water tanks side by side. There was a tank heater in one, and his invention – a water rippler – in the other.
While the tank with the heater remained frozen solid, bubbling water danced beneath a skim of ice on the latter. A person could easily push through it with their hand, meaning a cow could push through to get a drink.
“This meant no more chopping ice and pitchforking it out of the tank. It was a simple matter of pushing through a thin layer of ice on top and removing it,” Randall stated. “When Shondah saw it, she thought other ranchers might be interested too because of the savings in electricity, as well as the functionality.”
They went to a patent attorney and filed their patent.
“We had to keep our idea a secret for a year until we reached the patent-pending status. At that point, our lawyer said we could start trying to make this a business,” Randall explained.
The Otwells then had to find an engineer who could take the homemade version – made from scraps around the ranch and things at the local hardware store – and put a form around it to mass produce the parts.
“The first prototypes and the first ripplers we are producing are made of structural foam. We have a company that is building these for us,” Randall said. “Those parts are sent to us, and we take the rest of the components and assemble them here at the ranch.”
Randall reiterated the rippler doesn’t require heat – as moving water doesn’t freeze as readily as stationary water – and runs on less electricity than a stock tank heater.
“Right now in Wyoming, the cost of running a 1500-watt stock tank heater that one can buy at any farm and ranch store will cost about $3.39 per day when the outdoor temperature is below freezing and the heater is running 24 hours a day,” Randall explained.
“The water rippler runs on a 120-volt AC outlet and has an AC to DC converter, which changes it to 12 volts DC to run the pump. Producers can run the water rippler on the same daily kilowatt hours for 11 cents per day, compared to the $3.39 to run a tank heater,” he added.
Summer solutions
While the Otwells’ water rippler is certainly effective for winter months, it also proved beneficial during the summer as well.
“We ran the water rippler in our stock tanks through summer this year,” Randall shared. “I kept two stock tanks side by side – one with a water rippler and one without. We put thermometers in each tank, and the one with the water rippler stayed 10 degrees cooler than the stagnant, stale water in the other tank.”
This can make a big difference in palatability and pest control, including deterring mosquitos from laying eggs.
Moving water also helps deter algae buildup in a stock tank.
“We are getting as much interest from people in the South who want to use the rippler in the hot summer as we are in the North,” Randall said.
While this idea has already been utilized for pets through water dishes with constantly circulating water, the Otwells are doing it on a larger scale for livestock.
Shondah said, “Animals are drawn to the sound of running water. On hot days, we’ve watched our heifers come to these tanks and fight over who gets closest to the outlet where the water is moving the fastest.”
Hearing water movement can be an advantage in a weaning pen as well, so calves can locate the water source, especially if they grew up drinking from a stream and are not familiar with water tanks or other artificial water sources.
“One lady who reached out to us raises mink and thinks this will be wonderful for her operation in the winter because it’s low voltage and very safe, with no moving parts,” Shondah shared. “She thinks this will keep ice from forming on the tanks where her mink swim.”
Ripplers will soon be available online at water-rippler.com. The Otwells are also active on Facebook @WaterRippler, where individuals can find more information or stay up to date on Shondah and Randall’s journey.
Heather Smith Thomas is a corresponding writer for the Wyoming Livestock Roundup. Send comments on this article to roundup@wylr.net.
