Horse Waterers

The main types of horse waterers (also known as drinkers or automatic drinkers) are:

Heater or Unheated
Tongue or Float
Mains or Gravity Fed
Inside or Outside

See below for discussion of each of these characteristics.

Heated or Unheated

Heated waterers warm the water in the drinker to prevent the water from freezing. The water is not hot, simply heated sufficiently that it does not freeze. Heating is done through an electric coil within the waterer, so this requires an electrical connection.

A heated drinker is healthier for horses for two reasons. The first is that if a waterer freezes, the horse is unable to drink, which can lead to various health issues such as dehydration or colic. Secondly, research has shown that during cold weather horses drink less if the water is very cold than if it is slightly warmed; this reduction in water consumption which occurs with unheated drinkers can lead to partial dehydration and the associated health risks (although with most horses this risk is relatively low).

Another advantage is that heating the drinker prevents ice damage to the drinker. Depending on the drinker, it may also prevent damage to the water pipe where it connects to the drinker, a common point for ice damage due to difficulty of insulating or heating the pipe at the point of connection.

Tongue or Float

Automatic drinkers are automatically refilled in one of two ways. They can have a lever (known as a tongue as it is usually shaped like a tongue) within the drinker which the horse pushes with its nose to refill the drinker. Alternatively, their can be a float (like the float in the water compartment of a toilet) which goes down when the water level is lowered, thereby opening a valve and refilling the drinker, which then causes the drinker to refill, resulting in the float rising and turning off the water.

In normal circumstances, both methods work well. There are a few points to consider:

An advantage of tongue drinkers is that they are smaller (more compact), as they do not need a separate compartment for the float.
An advantage of the float mechanism is that the drinker refills automatically without the horse having to push on a lever. Horses typically learn quite quickly (typically within a couple of days) to use a tongue drinker. However, if one has a stall for guest horses which may not always have experience with tongue drinkers, they may not know how to refill them and consequently be unable to drink.
In rare cases, the lever for a drinker may jam open (resulting in continuous flow of water) or shut (no water). Although quite uncommon, this problem occurs more often with float drinkers than tongue drinkers.

When installing a tongue drinker in a stall with a horse which is not used to them, one needs to make sure that the horse gets enough to drink until it learns how to use it. One approach is to ensure that it has a separate filled water bucket, but in the event that the horse drinks only from the bucket it may take a long time to learn how to use the drinker. A quicker approach is to:

Depress the tongue so that the drinker fills and the horse can drink from it.
Throughout the day, periodically refill the drinker by pressing the tongue. One objective of this is to ensure that there is water for the horse to drink so that it does not become dehydrated. The other is to ensure that there is water so that the horse gets used to using the drinker.
Eventually the horse will accidentally push the tongue and refill the drinker himself. The first few times they do this they may be startled by the sudden flow of water (and associated noise) and stop, but generally they soon become used to it.
Monitor the horse to ensure both that it is drinking and to know when it learns how to refill the drinker itself. Once the horse starts to routinely refill the drinker itself (typically a couple of days), you no longer need to monitor the horse or refill the drinker yourself.

Mains or Gravity

Most drinkers are designed to be connected directly to the mains (home water supply). Some are designed to be fed from a gravity system, which consists of an elevated water tank. The difference between the two is the water pressure at the point it arrives at the drinker; in particular drinkers designed for a gravity fed system may not be able to cope with the high water pressure of being connected directly to a mains system.

Even with drinkers designed for mains water, some brands do not cope well with high water pressures. Problems include tongues being hard to depress (due to need to depress valve which is under high pressure) or water jetting with excessive force into the drinker bowl (in some cases so forceably that it bounces out again). In such cases, one may need to change brands or install a water pressure regulator into the water pipe.

Inside or Outside

Most horse waterers are intended to be installed inside, typically to a stall wall. Provide they are properly insulated against freezing cold, one can install them outside as well. One advantage of outside waterers is that it allows the horses to drink while in their paddocks or pastures, without having to go into their stalls (thereby allowing the stalls to be closed and kept clean during the day).

There are also a number of horse waterers designed specifically for installation outside. They are typically connected to a buried pipe and often have a build-in stand. Some brands are designed with a bowl which fills when the horse depresses the waterer tongue but afterwards both the bowl and stand empty so that there is no water above ground to freeze.

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