I wanted to share the feeder and waterer I recently added to our small coop.
The feeder is just a box on the back of the coop with a big sheet of acrylic so I can easily see how much feed is left. It spills through a hole into the tray on the inside. No problems yet, although I think I might cut the hole a little bit larger, so the feed rises closer to the top of the tray and is easier to get to. It's only 8 or 9" wide, and all three of our hens happily eat from it at the same time.
The waterer is a 2 gallon bucket connected by a short length of hose to PVC with some horizontal nipple waterers. Two in the main run and one up in the hen house, since they like to hang out there on cooler days. It took me a couple tries to get the fitting attached to the bucket, but a whole lot of JB Weld ended up doing the job. The nipples are also held in with a little bit of epoxy, since I had trouble getting them to thread into the PVC.
I did have trouble with ice the other night. It was bad enough that one of the PVC fittings I hadn't glued was pushed out and all the water gushed out. Fortunately, this was first thing in the morning while we were watching. I'm going to try an aquarium heater in the bucket, but I'm not sure if the more distance bits of plumbing will still be able to freeze or not. If so, I'll just switch back to a plain bucket with nipples in the run until the weather warms up.
The feeder is just a box on the back of the coop with a big sheet of acrylic so I can easily see how much feed is left. It spills through a hole into the tray on the inside. No problems yet, although I think I might cut the hole a little bit larger, so the feed rises closer to the top of the tray and is easier to get to. It's only 8 or 9" wide, and all three of our hens happily eat from it at the same time.
The waterer is a 2 gallon bucket connected by a short length of hose to PVC with some horizontal nipple waterers. Two in the main run and one up in the hen house, since they like to hang out there on cooler days. It took me a couple tries to get the fitting attached to the bucket, but a whole lot of JB Weld ended up doing the job. The nipples are also held in with a little bit of epoxy, since I had trouble getting them to thread into the PVC.
I did have trouble with ice the other night. It was bad enough that one of the PVC fittings I hadn't glued was pushed out and all the water gushed out. Fortunately, this was first thing in the morning while we were watching. I'm going to try an aquarium heater in the bucket, but I'm not sure if the more distance bits of plumbing will still be able to freeze or not. If so, I'll just switch back to a plain bucket with nipples in the run until the weather warms up.
