This
year’s photo contest will have several categories and prizes, so you’ll
have an even better chance than usual of winning!  Please read
this entire post to make your entry the most likely to suceed.



Deadline: July 18, 2012

Entry instructions:
Email up to three digital photos to info@avianaquamiser.com. 
Your photos should be no more than 4 MB in size, and if they’re large
please send one per email.  In addition, please include a written
description with your photo(s).  If you win, we’ll email you back
to
ask for your mailing address.

What we’re looking for:
We judge entries based on the factors outlined in the next
section.  You might like to look at the winners of previous
contests to get an idea of what we like:

• 2011:
  Heated chicken waterer
• 2010:
  General photo contest
• 2009: General
  photo contest

2012 categories: When you
submit your photo(s), please include a note with each one telling me in
which category you’d like to enter your photo.  Your options are
outlined below:

• Artistic chickens: The
  winning entry in this category will be a beautiful photo of your
  chicken(s) drinking from either our premade waterer or a waterer you
  made from one of our do it yourself kits.  We’ll be judging the
  entries in this category nearly entirely on artistic merit.
• Chicks, peacocks, and more:
  Entries in this category will showcase baby birds or birds of species
  other than chickens.  We’ve heard from lots of customers who have
  used our waterer with quail, turkeys, pigeons, and many other birds,
  and we’d like photographic evidence!  We’ll be judging the entries
  in this category based on uniqueness combined with artistic merit.
• Ingenious waterers: This
  is the category for the inventors among you.  Our customers have
  turned our do it yourself kits into a vast array of waterers perfectly
  suited to their setting.  We’ve seen bucket waterers fed by
  gutters, heated waterers of all kinds, and many other unique
  options.  The winner in this category will be judged based on
  ingenuity of both the photo and the written description, so spend a few
  minutes polishing your words when you submit your entry.

Prizes: The first prize winner in each category will receive
their choice of either a 10 pack
DIY kit or our working
chicken combo pack (three pre-made waterers).  The second
place winner will receive their choice of either a 3 pack
DIY kit with drill bit or one pre-made
waterer.  Several other
honorable mention winners will be showcased on our website.

The fine print:
All photos entered in our contest become the property of Anna Hess and
Mark Hamilton.  We don’t care if you use them for other things; we
just want the right to put them up on our website and potentially use
them in our instructions, ebooks, and print books.  By submitting your
photos, you’re agreeing that you won’t receive any further compensation
for the use of your photos and text.

Over the last year and a half, our customers
have given us a lot of feedback.  Several folks used the wrong
size drill bit to make their homemade chicken waterers since the right
size is difficult to find at many hardware stores.  Unfortunately,
if you use the wrong drill bit, your waterer leaks, which defeats the
whole purpose.  Mark finally found a supplier where we can buy
drill bits in bulk, so now you can add on the proper drill bit for just
$5 when you buy your kit, saving yourself a lot of running
around.  For customers with a very well-stocked toolkit, we’ve
kept the lower priced option on the shelves.



Although no one
complained about our instructions, I wanted them to be even easier to
use, so I revamped those too.  Once I added in a lot of the
inspiring photos you’ve been sending us of your own homemade waterers,
the resulting file was 23 pages long!  I figured a lot of people
would enjoy the extra information, but others would find it
daunting.  To keep everyone happy, I also summarized all of the
most important construction information into a one page, quick
instruction sheet that we include with our homemade chicken
waterer kits.



I hope our new customers
enjoy the extra information and even simpler construction!