Heat and more heat

It's been record hot for the past week or so but it's a fairly typical SW Missouri summer. The cows are hot and taking to the ponds. This is a real problem with mob grazing and one of the biggest challenges in the summer. As I've shared in the past, a mob of cattle can do real damage to ponds and water quality. We have had a few fish kills that were not pretty (see prior posts for pictures). We have decided to try to fence the cattle out of the ponds and pump water to a stock tank. I am not a fan of spending money on equipment like this, but I really think the payback will be fairly quick, especially if performance is suffering due to water quality (this is very debatable, I've seen studies that show this both ways). We will start using the pump and tank hopefully this week...I'm anxious to see how the cattle react. I think providing good, cold water to the cattle in the mob can only be a positive.