I just feel like it’s an expensive waste of money and electric - only find it to be absolutely necessary if you live somewhere way north and can’t be home for hours and hours at a time.
Also, chickens don’t need water at night. I would empty it at night, bring it inside a garage or porch and just refill in the morning.... my wateters are outside of the coop at night, I’m just too lazy to bring them in when I have perfectly good hot water to take care of it lol.
It is, that’s why I’ve decided to take the complication out of it and just top off frozen water with warm water to melt it instead of investing in a fancy water heater. Of course, I recognize that most people don’t have the luxury of doing this if they work a typical 9-5, which I don’t. I work...
I have rubber bowls that don’t tip over. Every morning I fill gallon milk containers with warm water and take them out to the run. I dump the frozen water and replace it with the warm water. I’m in NC so rarely does the water freeze during the day, but when it does I just fill that same gallon...