Building waters

[RonP]

Cutting the top off of a 5 gallon water bottle makes an excellent lid for hanging feeders.

The bottom makes for an excellent bowl.

 

[leck8]

Please consider using horizontal nipples, if you are not doing so already. They look like this and work in a heated bucket very well. I have, as do you, two of these five gallon buckets with horizontal nipples heated with bucket heaters, as shown below. We have only been down to -20 F this year, and they both worked just fine, at least at my place. On the shredded paper for the nest box, I do not, but I do understand it to be ok to use. Regarding the number of nipples, I think they say four or so birds per nipple. I like to use five or more, so as to extend the number of birds and uses for 'odd' occurrences as bird keepers seem to often have. I a bunch in the photograph shown below. I was trying to water eighty banty birds from one bucket, and it just gets used wherever it is needed. No problem with too many, but not enough seems to defeat the purpose. Best to you and your birds, RJ

How did you teach birds to use nipples or did they figure it out on there own

 

[dakotafig]

They figure it out just fine. I use the horizontal nipples and they are great.

 

[RJSorensen]

Well it is a bit frighting if you have not done it before. More so for you than the birds. I just fill up the bucket, remove the old water(s) and plunge the nippled a few times to get a drop or two of water to sit in the little trough on the bottom of the nipple. You can show a bird or two… but as long as there is water in the nipple notch, they will find it and in pecking at the drop, they will release more and it is all history from there. It may sound sort of silly, but it is just you sucking it up to make the change, the birds are smarter than we think.

Best to you and your birds,

RJ

 

[leck8]

Well this will be the only water in the coop and they will grow up with it so hopefully they figure it out

 

[JeepDVL45]

I have horizontal waterers for my birds too. Two of my birds were 3 before I went to the horizontal waterer. Even after being used to water dishes, it only took about a day and a half for them to figure them out.