Count livestock and garden water separately from drinking water: a cow drinks 50-80 liters a day, a goat 5-10 liters and a chicken about 0.5 liters, and each millimeter of irrigation over a square meter is one liter. These uses are largest in the dry season, exactly when the source is weakest, so a spring giving 720 liters a day in August can be consumed almost entirely by animals and beds, leaving people short.
Part of Community Water System
Livestock and irrigation demand is the water drunk by animals and applied to crops, the part of a village’s demand that is not for people and that does not need to be drinking quality.
Animals And Beds Can Outweigh The People In The Dry Season
Per animal the figures in the community water system page are: a cow 50-80 L/day, a goat 5-10 L/day, a chicken about 0.5 L/day. A single cow therefore drinks as much as a person’s whole comfortable allowance. Garden demand is set by the area, the crop and the weather, and is the most uncertain line in the budget.
The timing is the hazard. Animals drink more and beds need more when it is hot and dry, and a spring is weakest then. A budget that balances in spring can fail in August.
Neither use needs drinking-quality water. A separate source, a rainwater cistern (Cisterns and Rainwater Storage) or a stream point downstream of the settlement, can take this load off the treated, piped supply. Keep it on a separate pipe.
What You Need
- A herd count by species
- A bed area in square meters, and an assumed daily depth of water in millimeters
- A trough placed away from the intake and from every tap
- A separate line or cistern if the piped source cannot carry both uses
Method: Count, Convert, Then Compare With August
Step 1: Animals. Multiply each species by its daily range and add the results.
Step 2: Beds. Area (m²) × depth (mm) = liters, because 1 mm over 1 m² is 1 L. Choose the depth from what your crop actually takes in the hottest month; the value used below is an assumption for the arithmetic, not a measured crop requirement.
Step 3: Compare with the dry-season source, not the spring-time one.
Step 4: Reassign. If the total exceeds the dry-season flow, move the garden to rainwater, shrink it, or schedule it.
Worked Example: The August Squeeze
Inputs: 2 cows, 6 goats, 20 chickens; beds of 100 m² at an assumed 5 mm/day; 20 people; spring giving 0.5 L/min in August.
- Animals, low: (2 × 50) + (6 × 5) + (20 × 0.5) = 100 + 30 + 10 = 140 L/day. High: (2 × 80) + (6 × 10) + (20 × 0.5) = 160 + 60 + 10 = 230 L/day.
- Beds: 100 m² × 5 mm = 500 L/day. As buckets, 500 ÷ 20 = 25 buckets.
- Non-drinking total: 140 + 500 = 640 L/day up to 230 + 500 = 730 L/day.
- Spring in August: 0.5 L/min × 1,440 = 720 L/day.
- Left for people at the low end: 720 - 640 = 80 L/day, which is 80 ÷ 20 people = 4 L per person. At the high end the animals and beds need 730 L/day against 720, so nothing is left at all.
Four liters per person is a survival ration and not the 20-liter minimum. The conclusion is not to starve the animals: it is to feed the beds from another source, or cut them, before August.
Common Mistakes
- Watering beds from the drinking supply in the dry season. The people run out first.
- Putting the trough at the standpipe drain. Animals and their manure then sit by the tap, and a link back into the drinking line is a cross-connection.
- Letting livestock reach the spring box. The spring-capture guidance fences at least a 10 m radius.
- Assuming one depth for every crop. Check what the beds really take.
Safety
Keep animal water physically separate from drinking water
A trough or irrigation line connected to the drinking main can draw contaminated water back into it whenever pressure drops. Take non-drinking water from its own tap, off its own pipe, and keep animals out of the area around the intake, the spring box and every standpipe.
What’s Next
- Learn next: Source Selection — whether the source can carry all these uses at once
- Combine with: Dry Season Backup — a second source for the beds and herd