One of our biggest shocks when we put the
Avian Aqua Miser in our tractors was how little water the birds
actually drank. We’d been spilling a gallon or two of water a
day, trying to flush the poop out of our old waterers. But when
the water reservoir is enclosed and chickens drink from a nipple, the
birds only consume about half a cup per day.
Temperature, obviously, affects our chickens’ drinking rate, but we’ve
discovered that age does too. We have three tractors of chickens
— one contains three year old hens and the other two contain 16 month
old hens. The older hens drink nearly twice as much as their
younger farm-mates! I wonder whether the plentiful clean water in
our homemade
chicken waterers is the reason that our three year old hens are
still laying at nearly the same rate as the youngsters?
