Author: Anna & Mark

It’s
time
to put on your thinking cap and come up with a heated chicken waterer
based on our do it yourself
chicken waterer kit! 
Submit your photos and instructions
for a chance to win a 10 pack
DIY chicken waterer kit.  This kit is my
favorite size since it allows you to create four bucket waterers,
enough to keep most flocks hydrated during a long weekend trip out of
town.

Deadline: February 28, 2011

Entry instructions:
Email digital photos and written instructions outlining the
construction of your homemade heated chicken waterer 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.  The written part of your entry should
tell what supplies you used and how you constructed your waterer. 
If you win, we’ll email you back to
ask for your mailing address.

What we’re looking for:
This winter, Mark has resolved to find the best way to
turn our do it yourself
chicken waterer kit
into a homemade heated chicken waterer.  In the past, we’ve just taken
in our waterers overnight during cold weather,
which is easy due to their cleanliness and small size, but I understand
that in the far north, chicken-keepers have to swap out water multiple
times a day to keep their flock hydrated.  A couple of our
customers
have come up with solutions that begin to solve the problem — one
uses an enclosed light bulb near the nipple to keep it from freezing and another
uses a stock tank deicer to keep the water in the bucket warm. 
We’re looking for something even simpler that will work with extremely
cold temperatures to help out folks where the snow is already
falling.  The winning entry will use photos and words to clearly
show how the heated waterer can be made by the average chicken-keeper.

Prizes: One grand prize
winner will receive a 10 pack DIY chicken waterer kit, along with the
bonus ebooks and video.  Several other
honorable mention winners will be showcased on our website.

The fine print:
All photos and essays 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.

Our homemade chicken
waterers make it
easy to leave town for as long as a week in the summer, but frozen
nipples nix winter trips.  With the carrot of a visit to the
Yucatan dangling in front of his nose, Mark set to work to turn one of
our bucket waterers into a heated waterer that
would survive winter’s freezing temperatures.  The result is
simple and works well, but still needs some tweaking to make it a bit
more elegant.



Version 1.0 is shown
above — drop an Ice and Easy Deicer in a bucket waterer, plug it
in, and wrap the bucket in Reflectix to hold in the heat.  This
version worked fine until temperatures dropped to 17 degrees
Fahrenheit, at which point the nipples froze up.  If you live in a
warmer climate, this may be all you need.

Version 2.0 added a 65
watt bulb in a metal reflector to channel the light and heat onto the
nipples.  The extra warmth kept water flowing until temperatures
dropped down to about 5 degrees Fahrenheit, a rare occasion around here
and one which seldom lasts more than a few hours.  This version is
definitely good enough for our winters, and when we came back from our
vacation we discovered the unintended side effect — increased egg
production due to the light. 



Mark’s going to keep
experimenting, though, because the light bulb uses more energy than we
really need to keep the water thawed.  We’d also like the design
to be more elegant and easier for the backyard enthusiast to put
together.  Meanwhile, don’t forget that you
can win a 10 pack DIY kit if you come up with a better solution.  We look forward to
seeing your heated chicken waterers in action.