Author: Anna & Mark

Clean water is essential for chicks

December 7, 2009 Posts No Comments

Even day old chicks can drink from our automatic chicken waterer.Although
clean water is important for all chickens, it becomes essential for
chicks.  In addition to the health hazard from dirty water, chicks
are prone to fall into even very shallow bowls of water and drown.



I’d been tempted to
order some chicks to test them on our automatic chicken waterer, but I couldn’t quite figure
out what to do with the extra eggs that would ensue.  Luckily, one
of our customers decided to take the plunge and try it out
herself.  Last week, I got the following email:



O Happy Day Anna!

Day old chicks WILL drink out of
chicken nipples! I’ll send pictures later! Also will be posting about
this on my blog & adding a link to y’all on my web site. We are
incredibly impressed!



I’m thrilled to know
that even day old chicks will drink out of the Avian Aqua Miser. 
Thanks for trying it for us, Titus!

Chicken bucket waterer lid

December 7, 2009 Posts 2 Comments

Step by step photos to make a homemade chicken waterer lid.I always enjoy getting photos from our
customers, especially the ones who use some ingenuity when putting
together their homemade chicken
waterers.  Ruth
H. emailed me a couple of weeks ago with her method of keeping her
bucket waterer poop-free without making it hard to fill:



I wanted to share my idea for
the people who make their waterer out of the buckets at the hardware
store. In my case, it’s a 2 gallon bucket, but it’d be the same for a 5
gallon except it’d have a 3rd nipple.



I used a couple things I
found in the PVC pipe section of the hardware store to make an easy way
to refill the bucket. I don’t know the names of the items, though, lol.
It’s wide enough for me to insert my hand if need be, or to put in one
of those small water heaters they use for bird baths in the winter.



I know from experience
that the plastic lids they make for five gallon buckets can be a
serious pain to take off and put back on, so I think Ruth’s use of
plumbing pieces has real potential.  Thanks for sharing,
Ruth!

Bucket waterer in a coop.

Making a chicken waterer out of a hot water heater

December 7, 2009 Posts 6 Comments
Automatic chicken waterer using a hot water heater.


Jack F. emailed me a photo of his unique homemade chicken
waterer setup.  He had an old hot water heater — no longer
functional as a heater, but with a large storage capacity.  Jack
emailed me to ask if I thought he could install the nipples directly
into the base of hot water tank.

Unfortunately, chicken nipples are meant to be installed in relatively
thin-walled containers, so that idea didn’t float.  But Jack
didn’t give up.  Instead, he sent a hose out of the hot water tank
and then attached that to a length of pvc pipe.  The nipples were
easy to install in the pipe, allowing Jack to space them out to give
all of his chickens a safe place to drink.

Here’s the really cool part — Jack added another thin hose running
vertically out of the main pipe.  He added a few drops of red food
coloring to the water in the tank, and now the vertical hose is a quick
and easy way to tell how much water is in the tank.  As the
red-colored water drops in the vertical hose, he knows it’s dropping
similarly in the tank.  Great idea!  Thanks for sharing!