What’s swimming in your stock water?

Learn to identify aquatic insects to determine if your livestock’s water sources are healthy and provide the nutrition they need.

When Wyatt DeSpain began work at the Noble Research Institute, he knew his work would require a long-term view.

DeSpain is a research associate on Noble’s transitions team of scientists, which monitors changes in wildlife, soils, vegetation and water on Noble Ranches. The team compares the data it gathers each year to the baseline conditions of “year zero” or 2022, the year Noble began its transition from conventional to regenerative management.

His focus is limnology – the study of inland waters. He has spent the past two years collecting and analyzing more than 100 samples each year from stock ponds on Noble and cooperator ranch properties to search for indicators of how water quality changes in response to management choices.

“Most of the changes we expect to see will occur over the course of 5, 10, 20 years,” DeSpain says. “It’s not something that happens right after a management change. It’s something that requires a lot of repetition and requires a lot of waiting to see what time will tell us.”

Still, he offers a simple pointer to help ranchers make a quick assessment of potential changes in their stock-pond water quality: look for what’s making a living in the water.

It’s a bug’s life: Some are sensitive, some put up a fight

The insect life in your stock water serves as a meaningful and, as the Noble team’s research is showing, statistically significant indicator of water quality. Some insects have a very low tolerance for pollution in the waterways on which they depend for life. This means that as fertilizer, pesticides or erosion runoff accumulate in a body of water, those species die off and disappear.

“But then you also have some bugs that could basically survive the apocalypse,” DeSpain explains. If you notice your ponds are filled with only the hardiest creepy-crawlers – leeches, slugs, snails, flatworms and some beetles – it’s a pretty strong indicator that your water quality is suffering. But don’t blame the messengers.

“It’s not that these guys don’t exist in healthy waters,” he says, “and they’re not the cause of the problem. But in a healthier aquatic ecosystem, they’ll be outcompeted by the good bugs.”

Those ‘good bugs’ include macroinvertebrates like dragonflies, mayflies, damselflies, caddisflies and more.

“If you’re looking for reassurance that your stock water is healthy enough for your cattle to drink, look for these kinds of insects to dominate the bug life at that pond,” DeSpain says.

Dragonflies become an easy posterchild for healthy waterways, he says, because they’re easy to spot in adulthood, and most producers recognize the value dragonflies offer in their predation of nuisance bugs like mosquitoes. But there’s a whole bevy of bugs who serve similar purposes and are equally sensitive to water quality.

Many of these macroinvertebrates share a few common traits in their juvenile state, which is the life stage when most are making a living in your healthy stock ponds. Many have an elongated thorax (body), long legs, antennaes and multiple spike- or thread-like protrusions from their backsides.

Quality water is quality of life for livestock and your business

“When waters are polluted, it’s really well-established that livestock production suffers,” DeSpain says. Existing research points to a nearly 10% boost in gain among cattle herds drinking high-quality, clean water compared to water of lesser quality. Nutritionists agree that access to high-quality drinking water offers the most basic and valuable nutrient an animal needs to succeed, but it’s often inadvertently overlooked.

“Sometimes, even when you know they have access to water, you’re not necessarily out there to see if they’re drinking it,” DeSpain says. Except in the case of extreme pollution – an oil leak or other catastrophic event – water quality may degrade slowly, going undetected to the casual observer over time.

Keeping an eye of the presence of the ‘good’ bug life is almost like a reverse ‘canary in the coal mine.’ Their presence alerts you to high water quality. If you’re not seeing these environmentally sensitive insects, it might be a good idea to take some water samples to send to a professional lab for a full physical-chemical analysis, DeSpain says.

The water quality research DeSpain and the transition team conduct on the seven Noble Ranches does not have data ready to release yet. He says, however, that they have found statistical significance in the correlation of their physical-chemical lab analysis reports on water quality and their population counts of the indicator insect species present. They’re working on developing a tool to help producers analyze, categorize and record their own insect observations as a preliminary, inexpensive option to determine if they need to collect formal water samples on their ranch.

“The important thing to keep in mind is, this is a simple observation you can make while you’re out checking your livestock or fishing your stock ponds,” DeSpain says. “It doesn’t have to be a big event, but it can make a big difference in the health of your livestock and your ranch.”

Laura Nelson

Laura Nelson is an agriculture journalist, author, and farm and ranch photographer based in western Nebraska. When she’s not writing or researching for her next book project, she’s tending her garden, helping on her family’s farm and ranch, curling up with a good book, or staking a claim in the front row of a music festival.