Ice capades

We received these innovative ways to keep the water buckets from freezing this winter from Susie who lives on Florida Road. We have great neighbours! Your ideas are very welcome, too. Remember we do not have electricity.

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I doubt that I've thought of or explored anything that you two haven't, but I've been looking for ideas for solar heating of water for animals. So far I haven't come across the perfect solution (!), but, for what they're worth, here are a couple of suggestions I've found which might be better than nothing.

(Both from a website for feeding feral cats)

Get an old tire off the rim [we could get you one - someone dumped a few beside the road at the top of Wildlife Hill!], and stuff it with rocks. Wedge a container (like a large bucket) in the hole in the tire and put the water in there. The black tire will absorb the light from the sun during the day and heat the rocks within the tire The rocks will radiate the warmth enough to keep the water from freezing.

This suggestion comes from a horse magazine, to keep water for the horses in the fields in winter. The barn manager piled a few rock-filled tires on top of each other and then inserted a water bucket in the center of them. She said this actually prevented the water from freezing for a period of time.

"Snuggle Safe." It's a disk about the size of a frisbee intended to keep pets' bedding warm. Under normal indoor conditions, you put it in the microwave for 5 minutes and it stays hot for 12 hours. For outdoor use, it has been reported that the discs can be safely heated up to 8 minutes in a 1,000 watt microwave to last as long as possible outdoors. Depending on the microwave, the discs can conceivably melt so you have to do a little trial and error to see how hot you can go.

The discs are just the right size to fit inside the under rim of some large dinner plates and water bowls. In the frigid outdoors their heat lasts 2-3 hours. If you can afford it, it's convenient to have two sets of discs - that way you can heat and bring one set to the colony, and pickup and bring back the set used the last time you were feeding. Available through PETsMART (Item No. 451284; $19.99).
http://www.petsmart.com