This year we had two (and only two) chronic health problems with our flock (all now about 18 months old).
One went from laying eggs with strange deposits/pigmentation that degraded into hardly laying at all, frequent laying of rubber eggs, and increasing lethargy (details in this thread: https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...nyone-seen-this-before.1250379/#post-20098369).
The other was a case of asymptomatic (but very messy and challenging) diarrhea (mentioned in this thread here: https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...erwise-seems-normal-possible-problem.1231772/).
Both chronic issues were challenges for several months. As the heat of the summer settled in we changed our outdoor waterer (homemade) to commercial product that made use of chicken cups to help the girls beat the heat. We were shocked that both conditions showed immediate improvement in a single day and by the third or fourth day, both chronic conditions had completely vanished!
We have made use of two different outdoor waters since and have not had any signs of recurrence of these chronic symptoms in the past four+ months.
The old waterer we replaced was nothing more that a plastic #1 (PET) 1 quart orange juice bottle with horizontal nipples installed in it. It was in service for 13 months, most of which was outdoors where the bottle was exposed to UV and rough weather conditions.
The new waterers are both food-grade HDPE containers (one with chicken cups for heat, the other with horizontal nipples for cold). We think the PET plastic broke down over time releasing chemicals (perhaps phthalates, which are possible endocrine disrupters) into the water that the chickens were drinking. The bottle yellowed and became translucent (rather than clear) so obviously SOMETHING was breaking down.
There is a lot of misunderstanding about plastic bottles and health concerns. Interested parties will have to dig into the matter for themselves. Snopes.com has a good summary write up here:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/reuse-plastic-bottles/
Here's a write up of phthalates on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalate
Regardless of the EXACT chemical mechanism, this was a serious health risk to the chickens. We feel terrible for not having recognized this sooner.
I would strongly encourage any chicken keepers to make use of food grade HDPE in waterers at a minimum. All other plastics are more risky. BPA-free polycarbonate bottles (e.g. Nalgene PC) might be acceptable. I've been using the same PC Nalgene bottle for 10 years. But I'm obviously much larger than a chicken and only a small percentage of the water I drink passes through that bottle.
Ideally I'd use stainless steel for a chicken waterer, except the thermal conductivity of the metal causes problems in both hot and cold environments. No easy answers here it seems...
But at least the girls are healthy and happy! Please keep them that way and don't do like we did and try to do a waterer on-the-cheap!
We are going to closely monitor how the food-grade HDPE waterers age over the next season. We may need to just budget to replace them every couple of seasons if they show any signs of degradation or the chickens show any unusual health signs. We will be watching very closely as this is a mistake we never want to repeat again!
Good luck out there!
One went from laying eggs with strange deposits/pigmentation that degraded into hardly laying at all, frequent laying of rubber eggs, and increasing lethargy (details in this thread: https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...nyone-seen-this-before.1250379/#post-20098369).
The other was a case of asymptomatic (but very messy and challenging) diarrhea (mentioned in this thread here: https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...erwise-seems-normal-possible-problem.1231772/).
Both chronic issues were challenges for several months. As the heat of the summer settled in we changed our outdoor waterer (homemade) to commercial product that made use of chicken cups to help the girls beat the heat. We were shocked that both conditions showed immediate improvement in a single day and by the third or fourth day, both chronic conditions had completely vanished!
We have made use of two different outdoor waters since and have not had any signs of recurrence of these chronic symptoms in the past four+ months.
The old waterer we replaced was nothing more that a plastic #1 (PET) 1 quart orange juice bottle with horizontal nipples installed in it. It was in service for 13 months, most of which was outdoors where the bottle was exposed to UV and rough weather conditions.
The new waterers are both food-grade HDPE containers (one with chicken cups for heat, the other with horizontal nipples for cold). We think the PET plastic broke down over time releasing chemicals (perhaps phthalates, which are possible endocrine disrupters) into the water that the chickens were drinking. The bottle yellowed and became translucent (rather than clear) so obviously SOMETHING was breaking down.
There is a lot of misunderstanding about plastic bottles and health concerns. Interested parties will have to dig into the matter for themselves. Snopes.com has a good summary write up here:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/reuse-plastic-bottles/
Here's a write up of phthalates on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalate
Regardless of the EXACT chemical mechanism, this was a serious health risk to the chickens. We feel terrible for not having recognized this sooner.
I would strongly encourage any chicken keepers to make use of food grade HDPE in waterers at a minimum. All other plastics are more risky. BPA-free polycarbonate bottles (e.g. Nalgene PC) might be acceptable. I've been using the same PC Nalgene bottle for 10 years. But I'm obviously much larger than a chicken and only a small percentage of the water I drink passes through that bottle.
Ideally I'd use stainless steel for a chicken waterer, except the thermal conductivity of the metal causes problems in both hot and cold environments. No easy answers here it seems...
But at least the girls are healthy and happy! Please keep them that way and don't do like we did and try to do a waterer on-the-cheap!
We are going to closely monitor how the food-grade HDPE waterers age over the next season. We may need to just budget to replace them every couple of seasons if they show any signs of degradation or the chickens show any unusual health signs. We will be watching very closely as this is a mistake we never want to repeat again!
Good luck out there!
