Shondah and Randall Otwell are ranchers in northeastern Wyoming — high-desert country that’s hot in the summer and cold in winter. Shondah is the fourth generation on the family ranch.

“We both left corporate jobs to come back to the ranch when my father passed away in 2010. One of our biggest challenges in winter was stock water. Our options were chopping ice or electric stock-tank heaters,” Shondah says. “Trying to heat water in an outdoor environment is challenging, because it only heats the water right around the element; the water farther away will freeze, so we still had to break ice on those tanks.”

Randall had the chore of trying to keep the water tanks functional and eventually came up with a better idea. He says it all started one winter day in 2019 when he was chopping ice out of an 800-gallon (gal.) tank. The tank had an electric heater, but the water was still frozen. He eventually removed the ice out of the tank and had water flowing again. However, he went to the next stock tank just to find it had the same issue. His frustration level was at the breaking point, and for a moment, he thought it was time to sell the cows and move somewhere else.

He started experimenting, making various devices in his shop. He found a lot of ways that didn’t work. He spent four years looking for an effective, affordable method to design something to keep water circulating at the tank’s surface.

Randall tried numerous devices; some froze solid, others moved insufficient water, and some clogged with debris, he says. “I kept testing various innovations. One morning it was 22° below zero, and I had Shondah come out to look at what I finally came up with.”

He showed her two 800-gal. plastic tanks side by side. There was a tank heater in one, and his water rippler in the other. Water bubbled beneath a skim of ice on the water rippler tank, while the tank with the heater remained frozen solid. The water rippler was moving the water under a thin layer of ice. A person could easily push through it with their hand, so they knew a cow could push through it with her chin and get a drink.

When Shondah saw the two products side by side, she said other ranchers might be interested because of the savings in electricity, as well as the functionality.

“I looked at her and said, ‘Really? You want to start a new business?’ and she said ‘Yes,’” recalls Randall.

The Otwells went to a patent attorney and filed their patent.

“We know what it costs in electricity to run an electric stock-tank heater, and we know what our water rippler cost and how effective it was, and wanted to create something that other people could use,” Randall says.

They found an engineer who could take the homemade version — made from scraps around the ranch and things at the local hardware store — and put a form around it to mass-produce the parts. This innovation doesn’t require heat. Moving water doesn’t freeze as readily as stationary water.