A quality water supply is essential to the production of healthy cattle.
Unsatisfactory water can result in poor production performance, sickness, or even death.
Overall, drinking water from subsurface sources on U.S. beef cow-calf operations is of high quality. This distribution varied considerably by region of the country, with wells cited as the primary source in 94.0 percent of Northcentral operations and only 64.1 percent of those in the Southeast. Some factors that affect water quality include levels of nitrite, nitrate, sulfate, and total dissolved solids. Levels of these components considered safe for livestock and the percentages of operations where water supplies were at or under safe levels are shown in Table 1. Nitrite Nitrite is occasionally found in water, but rarely at levels dangerous to livestock.