It was during a particularly long, cold winter about five years ago that Wyoming rancher Randall Otwell decided he’d finally had enough of dealing with frozen stock tanks.
So he and his wife Shondah began to look for a solution.
Multiple years and a handful of prototypes later, the Oshoto ranchers went out to check on their cattle one bitterly cold morning in 2022 and were excited to discover that their stock tanks were mostly clear of ice and drinkable.
Their invention had worked.
Called the Water Rippler, the small circular device floats on the surface of a stock tank and constantly circulates water with just the right pressure to create a rippling effect that mitigates ice.
During warmer months, the product helps prevent mosquitoes from laying their larva on stale water and slows the growth of algae.
“We have a video checking on our heifers,” Randall said. “It had been freezing for three days in a row, and I could walk out and literally push my hand through the little layer of ice that was left on top of the stock tank and there was still some open water the heifers were able to drink.
“No more popping ice with an ax and pitchfork and throwing them out. It was nice to see.”
The breakthrough marked the beginning of their journey to bring the Water Rippler to market so others can benefit from their innovative solution to one of the most annoying ranching developments. It’s taken two more years, but the device is set to hit the market this fall.
“We've had a phenomenal response to it, and there's been a lot of excitement,” Shondah said. “In the northern regions, we've gotten so many comments like, ‘I wish you’d invented this 40 years ago, it would have saved my shoulders.’ The southern states are reaching out for keeping their water cooler or handling the mosquito and algae issues.”
Piecing Parts Together
The couple are fourth-generation ranchers on their Crook County ranch in northeast Wyoming, which has been in Shondah’s family since the late 1930s.
It was winter 2019 when the idea for the Water Rippler took root. Tired of the expense and unreliability of electric stock tank heaters, they began looking for a solution.
“It was a pretty rough winter,” Shondah said. “We had ice issues and Randall said that there had to be a better way. So he started piecing the parts together and testing.”
They worked on it the rest of that winter and the following two as well, tweaking their design along the way. Their idea was to create a device that actually stopped the ice from developing. The couple went through four different prototypes with multiple changes to get to the device they have today. That included using various pumps and water circulators, as well as different sized piping. Placement in the water tank was also an issue, with some being set too low and others too high.
“I would say that there were some questionable moments when we’d go out with the early designs and they were frozen solid,” Randall said. “Let's just put it this way, I learned more ways that didn't work than I found that actually did.”
It wasn’t until late in the winter 2022 that they finally hit on something.
“It was 22 below zero that morning,” Shondah said. “We had our prototypes that we made on the ranch running in our stock tanks, and that morning when we saw what it was doing at 22-below we knew that they were actually working.”
The device is not only effective, but also affordable.
“One of the main elements that we love about it is that it runs 97% more efficiently than a stock tank heater or an electric stock tank heater,” Randall said. “The savings are tremendous when you go through the winter.”
With Powder River Energy, a kilowatt hour usage for an electric stock tank will run about $3.39 a day in Wyoming. The Water Rippler, meanwhile, costs about 11 cents a day and uses a DC power supply, meaning it can run off solar and battery as well.
“Products that are on the market today are not effective and they are very costly to run,” Randall said. “I just knew that there had to be a different approach, and after three years of different trials and errors, we finally came up with something that we thought actually worked, and it was extremely cost effective.”
Taking The Next Step
It wasn’t long after that first success that they decided they wanted to help others dealing with the same issues. The Otwells went to the patent office and currently have a patent pending. They then began looking at injection moldings and different ways to build the body that could be mass produced.
“The entire reason that we started it was not to create a new business, but just to create something that worked on our ranch and that worked for us,” Randall said. “But once we got that design down, that's when the wife said this was a marketable item, and the rest of the agricultural industry would benefit from it as well.”
With their initial design in hand, they walked into a manufacturing shop one day and asked if an engineer was available to take a look at the product that was sitting out in their car. The engineer helped them create a design, but as with the initial testing, this process took some time.
“Every time we’d get a prototype in, it just didn't quite do what we wanted it to do,” Shondah said. “So then you'd have to figure out how you could make the change to the diagram and articulate that to the engineer to get them to make it so it could then be 3D printed or mold printed.”
During that period, they also began researching injection molding companies and eventually decided to go with one in Kansas.
“That is kind of a hard learning curve to figure out – all of the business components,” Shondah said. “There's millions of products manufactured around the world, but when you've got a product idea, it takes some time to figure out who to use and how you're going to make it.”
It helped that late last year they were one of three winners in the 2023 Energy Capital Start-Up Challenge, which was put on by Impact 307 and Energy Capital Economic Development. Much of those funds went into initial engineering and prototypes, as well as early marketing, Shondah said.
Currently the final mold for mass production is being built for the body of the Water Rippler, which should be completed in six to eight weeks. At that time, the Otwells plan to do a short run to verify that it meets their standards. Then the product will go into production.
“Taking a prototype that we had built on the ranch out of materials that we had and getting it to an engineer to get it designed to meet our standards so that we could go into production with a company that makes the plastic molding was quite difficult for a bunch of ranchers from Wyoming,” Randall said. “It took a lot of fine tuning to get it to where it is.”
In The Final Stretch
The Otwells recently participated in gBETA Wyoming, a statewide startup accelerator program hosted by the national venture capital firm gener8tor in partnership with Microsoft. They were one of five startups accepted and at the conclusion pitched their company, Agricultural Innovations, LLC, to investors, community partners and the public at a showcase event Aug. 2 in Casper.
“Our pitch was more just a celebration at the end of the program,” she said. “We are not currently seeking funding, but we're trying to spread the word about what we're doing.”
People can stay up to date on the Otwell’s progress by going to the Water Rippler Facebook page. They began a social media marketing campaign about a month ago and have had people from 29 states, as well as from Mexico, Canada and Australia interested in their invention.
“We have gotten a remarkable response from the agricultural community – northern market, southern market, and honestly, international market at this point,” Shondah said.
They also recently developed a temporary website, water-rippler.com, with their e-commerce site expected to be up by September. In the beginning they plan to sell their product directly to consumers.
“It's all been a very wonderful experience up until now, but the minute that the first dollar exchanges hands with us, I think I'll be more nervous than I am now, waiting on the feedback from the rest of the country to see how it works and where it goes from there,” Randall said.
Later they will look at moving to larger scale production and hope to work with local and regional agriculture stores.
“Of course, our ultimate goal with this product would be to walk into a national ag retailer at some point and see our product on the shelf there,” Shondah said. “I mean, that's a pretty cool goal to work towards.”
