Using a mister

Hey everyone! I was just wondering what you all thought about using a mister for show cattle.  I am looking into buying one for my fan that will go in the barn. Will this cool the air a lot and help him grow the hair? He has the genetics and he's a shorthorn. Any advice helps!! Thanks!

I am from Ohio and this summer was a son of a gun heat wise. We tried the mister and it tended to get clogged up and was kind of a pain to keep the holes cleared out. We just started to rinse twice a day and it seemed to help. But the mister seemed to work when the holes were clear.

We are in Texas, so the summer was really booger.  All any of our calves had this summer was fans and misters.  At several shows we had people ask if they had been in coolers, so yes the misters will work, but not on their own, even with the misters you need to rinse and work that hair at least once, if not twice a day.  Some things to keep in mind with misters, if you have hard water, you may need to put a filter in the line just before the mister, those are tiny little holes in order to make that fine mist, and it doesnt take much at all to clog them.  If they get clogged soak them overnight in vinegar, I also accidentally found that blade cleaning solution works really well to.  If your misters run continuously then they tend to make a mess of your barn, which can counteract all the work to grow the hair, I put mine on timers and set them to run about 10-15 minutes every 20-30 minutes.  It kept them cool and kept from making such a mess in the barn.

I know what you mean about the heat! I live in Indiana so it was pretty bad as well!  The plan is to put a mister ring with 5 nozzles on our calf cooler fan.  We will also put another 24 inch power fan.  We will hang the two on a board above the calves.  I'm also contemplating on connecting two smaller fans as well. The barn is a 12 by 12 area.  I plan on rinsing and blow drying him in the morning, putting him in the misting barn and then ring and blow drying him for the night.  Might do it three times a day once school gets out. Any other helpful hints? Thanks for the advice so far!

My experience with misters is you need to put a filter on but we also bought an extra set of nozzles. We would change nozzles out every night and soak the ones we had in that day in vinegar until we put them in the next night.

I used misters on my steers for a while... just don't let them run all day lol because the barn can get pretty messy..the only thing that i had problems with was that my steers would be covered in hard water stains! The hair would have white stuff all over but it went away when we rinsed and dried them for the night...but maybe it will be different for you!

Had show cattle under misters many years ago before the current style of mister nozzle became popular.  Due to the stress on the local water systems had to go back to the "old style method" to keep the calving barn cool in sw OK this summer as the systems had to run to many chemicals to run through mister nozzles.  Use PVC pipe under pressure with a water hose connection end and take a red hot needle held in a pair of pliers (butane torch works well) and poke a hole through the PVC pipe. Then take the back of a red hot spoon to "smear" over your hole to make your mist. Some will cover completely so just move over and begin again.  It takes a lot fewer holes than you think it will to make plenty of mist, and you can adjust the flow rate as well as direction with the spoon.  The holes you make will not clog like the commercial nozzles will and when you think you have it about right, you have about double what you need.