Author: Anna & Mark

Thanks again for the nipples.  They are working
wonderfully.  I thought you might enjoy seeing how we ended up
using them.



Using the provided
drill, we drilled 13 holes, six inches apart in two inch PVC.










Screwing the nipples in
by hand tool provided to be impossible.  The PVC is too
hard.  We finally got it in using a deep 9/16 socket attached to
the end of a drill.  Once we switched to the drill, they went in
really fast.






We
have 13 nipples.  The eleven you sold us, plus two we got from
a  neighbor (which is how we found out about them.)  We put
ten across, and three on the legs for chicks.  (You probably
already knew this, but they do not work well on the side.  It took
some messing around to keep the side / leg ones from leaking. 
However, every one of the straight down one works perfectly.)





We
live in a cold climate.  I don’t want the pipes to freeze. 
So I ran a heated cord through the pipe.  This cord is intended to
keep rain gutters from freezing.  It is
water proof, and safe.



Picture of the heated
cord being run through all sections of the pipe.















Glued everything
together.








50 gallon rain gutter
barrel.  I thought about building a stand, so that I could put the
pipe in the bottom, but decided to be lazy.  About 30 gallons is
above the hole.  The rest is dead weight.  In the spring I am
going to plumb running water into the top of the barrel
using
a toilet float to keep it full.








We cut a 2 1/4 hole
using a hole saw.  Added
a slip fitting to the hole, glued the pipe in, plugged in the heated
cord, (since it is cold) and filled with water.  As you can see,
the chickens began drinking almost immediately.

We’ve been sharing inventive
designs for heated
chicken waterers all
month, but we also got several emails from folks who keep their
chickens’ water thawed using no electricity and just a bit of careful
management.  Although we’ve enjoyed the freedom that a heated
waterer gives us to go out of town in the winter, we don’t want you to
think you need a heated waterer to keep
your flock healthy in the winter.  Until this year, we just
followed the lead of the folks below, and the extra bit of work was no
real problem.