BEST waterer for COLD Ontario Canada winters

[LilyBird]

Right now I have a hardware store bucket with vertical poultry nipples on the bottom and a bucket deicer in the bottom of the bucket. Its keeping the water from freezing, but my birds are soaking themselves! My Silkie looked like a drown rat this afternoon.

So, I need something that is going to do the following for us:
- MUST withstand the cold temps (-40C)
- Water needs to be clean (I like that nothing can get into my current set up)
- Needs to be large (I have 9 birds and the water needs to be enough to last a few days at a time)
- Needs to work for both bantam and large breed

What is the best set up that will work for us??? All I keep hearing is a heated dog bowl, but I can see that getting filthy and needing to be washed and filled multiple times a day (which we don't have time for).

 

[wamtazlady]

I'm using a 10 or 15 gallon tote with lid from Walmart, horizontal nipples from ebay, and a 250 watt stock tank heater that is good to use in plastic. The heater comes on at 35F and off at 45F. Coldest it has gotten is 5 F which is -15 C, but so far it hasn't frozen up at all. The house sitter doesn't need to fill it very often, only ever 2 weeks. It's easy to see when it needs filled as the tote is semi transparent. The expensive part was the stock tank heater at about $50 which I bought at the local feed store. It's well worth it to me as I needed to make it as easy as possible for the house sitter to take care of my girls. If I were home in the winter I might have gone with a cheaper set up.

 

[Justso]

I've also heard good things about the horizontal nipples

, you could continue to use your deicer.

 

[lauren212]

I'm in Sudbury Ontario and have same cold winters. I haven't figured out what I'm going to use, but I want a large enough reservoir that won't freeze.