To keep your animals healthy, it’s important to maintain clean feeding and watering equipment. Disinfecting buckets when you have a sick animal, after a dirty job, or just periodically can help reduce bacterial, viral, and fungal contamination. Here are two different ways to disinfect buckets with common household items you already have on hand.
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It’s spring-cleaning time on the farm and one of the tasks on our ever-growing to-do list is disinfecting buckets.
We periodically disinfect our buckets to help keep our animals healthy. When we get home from a show, when one is sick, or after a dirty job, we give our buckets a soak in a disinfecting solution and a quick scrub so that we are not spreading bacteria, viruses, or fungi the next time it is used.
Disinfecting Agents for Bucket Cleaning
We use either household bleach or distilled white vinegar as disinfecting agents for cleaning buckets for our livestock. Both are relatively inexpensive, and we always have them on hand.
Both bleach and vinegar should be diluted in water to be used as disinfectants. We use 1 cup of bleach or vinegar per gallon of water to disinfect a bucket.
For example, to disinfect a 5-gallon bucket, we would add 5 cups of either bleach or vinegar to the bucket and then fill it with water.
Materials Needed to Disinfect a Bucket for Livestock
- Dirty bucket
- Water
- Bleach or distilled white vinegar
- Measuring cup
- Toilet brush
We disinfect our buckets outside. If you are using bleach, you might want to wear old clothes in case you accidently splash some on yourself. Use a measuring cup to add the bleach or vinegar to the dirty bucket. A toilet brush (used solely for this purpose) works well to scrub the bucket after it has been disinfected.
Directions for Disinfecting a Bucket for Livestock
- Determine the capacity of the bucket you want to disinfect. The bucket shown in the picture holds 2 gallons.
- With a measuring cup, add 1 cup of bleach or distilled white vinegar per gallon capacity to the dirty bucket. I added 2 cups of bleach to the bucket in the picture.
- Fill the bucket the rest of the way with water.
- Let the bucket sit undisturbed for 10 minutes.
- Dump the bucket out.
- Use a toilet brush to scrub the bucket.
- Rinse thoroughly with fresh water.
- Use the bucket with confidence that it is clean!
Mother, farmer, author, and teacher by trade… She loves tending to things and watching them grow!