How to Make a Hillbilly Misting Fan

7/24/2017

Summer may be full of balmy temperatures, but it never fails that fair week brings to most intense heat of the summer.

Last year the heat was almost unbearable. The barn was full of animals, but you were hard pressed to find a human under that hot roof.

As farmer's, it is our responsibility to make sure that our animals are as comfortable as possible.

With barn temperatures over 100 degrees, we were getting desperate. If we were hot and sweaty, can you imagine how hot a large hairy animal is?

We offered water at least once an hour, but we knew we needed to do something more.

Daniel came up with an easy and affordable solution.

He made his very own hillbilly misting fan.

I went to Walmart and bought 2 gallon jugs of water. We froze the jugs in the freezer overnight.

The next morning Daniel used his knife to make several slits in the plastic jugs. He then zip tied the frozen jugs to the fan cage.

When you turn on the fans, the cool are is pulled through the fan and blown onto the cows. As the ice begins to melt, the water is pulled through the fan creating a light mist.

Later in the day when all the ice had melted, we just refilled the jugs with water. The mist wasn't as cold, but was still cooler than just using the plain fan.

It may not look pretty, but you would be surprised how much cooler the air was.

When the heat got too much for us, we even took turns standing under the misting fans.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. When your animals are panting, too miserable to drink and extra stressed, you will do just about anything to improve the situation.

You can buy coolers with special fans attached to them to create that cool mist, but I think our $2.00 solution worked just as well.

This year fair week hasn't been quite as hot, but we have 2 water jugs in the freezer waiting, just in case.

This is Us - our life, our story, our farm