With water dripping at a slow rate on to the sow's head, a reasonable cooling effect is created for her. With the right positioning, the sow can escape the drip if she wants. Drippers use low volumes of water, but can result in unwanted water build-up on any solid flooring. They are plastic, and easy to install, maintain and operate. They are easy to install and made of plastic parts.
Maintenance consists of soaking components in vinegar and scrubbing when required.
Due to the large sprinkler areas and relatively limited control on whether pigs are in the zone when they run, water wastage occurs. Although producers have used garden sprinklers, they usually have excessively large and widely varying droplet sizes, resulting in even greater wastage. A sprinkler system can be used to assist with dunging patterns in swine finisher barns as well as cooling. As nozzle holes tend to be tiny, combined with the higher pressures, water droplets tend to atomize into moisture in the air, functioning like the pads in this regard. Air temperature drops and relative humidity rises.