Bottle Buttons

[Chickiechick]

Well I thought I'd give it a try and switch the buttons to a water bottle for drinking.
First button reaction............... oh my....

WHAT is that ???? With buttons piled in a clump as far away from bottle as possable

A few got brave and started to approach ........... arrghhh ...... boink..... back to the far corner .
After several such sessions there eventually was a clump of buttons around the bottle. Random pecking of cage side, floor , each other etc

....FINALLY one pecks the right spot .... woo hoo .... we have water and the crazey buttons are bottle pecking like maniacs

I'm going to give it some time and see if I like it. They do 'peck' water drops off the tip and into the bedding. Hmmmm. Water may be cleaner but I'm concerned the bedding will be wetter. I'll see how it goes over the next 24hrs.

 

[greenfamilyfarms]

I bet they stuck their necks wayyyy out, too.

 

[LilbitChicken]

adorable.....I just brought my handful of baby buttons home yesterday....(one had a horrible death- another thread)
BUT they are adorable, I want to try the bottle thing........I was curious on how well it works!!!!

 

[citalk2much]

I use water bottles on all my quail works great

 

[Chickiechick]

Well the 'bottle training'

has gone well.
All are drinking.
Not sure I'm happy about the extra drips in the bedding

, so for now I've put a tiny saucer under the bottle to catch the drips. Seems to be helping.

 

[Chickiechick]

Ok, it's official ................. I LOVE having bottle buttons

The drippage being 'pecked' off the tip must have been a learning thing as it has greatly decreased. Looks like I'll be taking out the drip catch saucer .

 

[Akane]

Even with several large rabbit bottles and multiple standard chicks pecking away missing half the time my pens do not get noticeably wet. The missed water by the buttons evaporates before you even know the bedding got wet. The only problem I had was that newly hatched buttons are too small to even peck the end on the smallest hamster bottle I could find. They spent plenty of time pecking drips that formed but slowly suffered increasing dehydration until I put a dish back in. After about 5-7 days old they had no problems though.