Cup-Waterers - need help understanding - **UPDATE**

I think it's a good idea to keep showing them how to use it, too. Some are slower learners than others. They'll copy each other, but they are also used to looking to you for food and water, so they'll watch you, too.

yep, I sit with them and push the levers to fill the cups. My big mean roo bites my fingers when I touch the levers. His name is Chicken Soup, for obvious reasons. Others come to peck at the levers once I start playing with them. Hopefully we are making progress.

What a funny name for your roo! That is really naughty to peck at your fingers, when you're just trying to help! It sounds like it's going better. You're doing a good job with them. Chickens have no idea how much their humans worry about them!

yeah, he's one of four young roos for my eleven pullets. Two or three are going to be rehomed to a new farm or to my freezer, depending on how nice they are. Chicken Soup is the biggest boy, but low on the totem pole in the flock and is generally mean. He will most likely not have my coop as his permanent home. My head roo, Johnny Bravo (JB for short) is definitely full of himself, but he isn't mean yet.

Thank you for the nice vote of confidence. I am still worried that they are going thirsty. I will sit with them again during lunchtime to see if we've made more progress.

morning update:

This morning when I opened the pop doors, I checked the water level and it had hardly changed at all from the night before when I closed them in. Yesterday during the day, the level did go down a good amount, though. It still doesn't seem like enough to me, and so I'm still worried.

It rained all day yesterday until around 5pm, when I finally let them out to free range. A few of them found a dish with some rainwater in it and drank like crazy again. The others did not.

I am still worried that some will not figure these new waterers out. How long can I push it with no other water source in order to force them to learn? If some are truly dehydrated because they just can't figure it out, will I be able to tell? I really, really don't want to walk out and find a dead chicken because I didn't provide it with water. I couldn't live with that...

I'm hoping that since most of them seem to be getting it, that eventually they all will... but I don't like to gamble with their health either...

I know this is quite a bit later than your last post. I'm sure you solved it by now, but on another thread, one person said she put little black dots on the yellow lever with a sharpie and that seemed to get them interested