Stock Water Budgeting Tool

The stock water budgeting tool helps dairy farmers assess the risk of running short on stock water at key times of the year.

The tool takes 10 minutes and uses easy to access data such as herd size, milking shed size, water use and storage size.

The data is used to estimate how many days' water supply there is available from the first day of each month.

The estimate is only based on on-farm storage and does not consider other sources such as springs, pumping from waterways or bores. This tool will help farmers to see when these alternative supplies will be most important. It can also provide an indication of the amount of water the farm requires from these sources.

Stock water planning fact sheet

Download the stock water planning fact sheet.

Key messages:

• Cattle water requirements cannot be cut back on. Water savings need to be found in the dairy shed, or water storage increased.
• On average, a milking cow needs at least 155 litres of water per day, and more in the warmer months.