Dairy cow welfare and milk production levels can be negatively impacted when animals lack access to sufficient amounts of good-quality drinking water. Farms vary greatly in how well they meet this standard. Connected drinkers are a useful tool for better quantifying the watering needs of dairy cows. Here, we explored how the interaction between drinkers density and social dominance level influenced the drinking behaviors of a group of 40 mid-lactation cows. We recorded cow drinking behavior and competitive outcomes (i.e., number of replacements) at the drinkers during the final 5 d of 2 drinkers density treatments, applied successively. The first was a high-density treatment, in which the cows had access to 12 drinkers. The second was a low-density treatment, in which they had access to 4 drinkers. Four social dominance categories were defined by applying the quartile classification method to the normalized David's score obtained from the low-density treatment data (NormDS values). In the high- versus low-density treatment, there were approximately 56 (±16) versus 119 (±31) replacements per drinker per day. Subordinate cows were lighter and younger than dominant cows. Dominant cows drank around 5 L more per day in the low- versus high-density treatment. Furthermore, both drinking rate and daily drinking frequency were higher in the low-density treatment, with the most pronounced differences seen for subordinate cows. In the low-density treatment, mid-subordinate cows shifted their drinking times, visiting the drinkers 1–2 h after peak water consumption by the group. The results for the low-density treatment thus indicate that the cows were experiencing more intense competition for water, leading to behavioral responses that were related to social dominance. Our findings underscore the need to more broadly explore the effects of increasing drinkers number under a variety of rearing conditions to provide farmers with better technical recommendations.