DIY Thread - Let's see your "Inventions".

[marktoo]

My $5 automatic chicken coop door opener/closer - Made with an automatic car antenna from a junkyard. Complete thread with details: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...a-radio-antenna-from-a-junkyard#post_11919410

Youtube videos of my door in action -

Very nice & a nice price.

 

[Frugal Que]

Wow! I just read all 99 pages of this thread over the past 4 days. What great ideas! I am definitely going to copy some of them.

This weekend, I will take pictures of my watering system for my chickens, ducks and rabbits. It is one system and it provides water to all my animals and it naturally cleans out the water bowls each day (side effect that I didn't plan on).

I needed something a little different because ducks love to mess up anything that contains water and i wanted something for all the animals. One system for all to make things easy for me. Even my dogs drink from it at times.

Cheap and easy too! I promise pictures on Saturday.

 

[perchie.girl]

Wow! I just read all 99 pages of this thread over the past 4 days. What great ideas! I am definitely going to copy some of them.

This weekend, I will take pictures of my watering system for my chickens, ducks and rabbits. It is one system and it provides water to all my animals and it naturally cleans out the water bowls each day (side effect that I didn't plan on).

I needed something a little different because ducks love to mess up anything that contains water and i wanted something for all the animals. One system for all to make things easy for me. Even my dogs drink from it at times.

Cheap and easy too! I promise pictures on Saturday.

Mee neeeds something like this.....

I use five gallon tubs with float waters fastened to them and they are a "cleaning" issue.

deb

 

[dennymeyrand]

11/32 drill bit is what you use for the chicken nipple waterers if you don't have a metric drill bit laying around.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Mee neeeds something like this.....

I use five gallon tubs with float waters fastened to them and they are a "cleaning" issue.

deb

meeee threeeeeee!

I use kiddie pools for the ducks, which have to be flipped and refilled throughout the day because no matter how I instruct the ducks in their table manners the kiddie pools double as water station and play station, and I've bought sink drains to install in the bottom of the kiddie pools so draining can happen without flipping, and the stronger people around here refuse to install them because "why bother"

and the water isn't being repurposed for anything but mud puddles that the dog runs through and nobody else really feels the urge to scrub the kiddie pools out as often as I do and even though I'm super careful to only buy "potable water" garden hoses to fill the kiddie pools with I seriously doubt the kiddie pools are a great place to store drinking water. And though the kiddie pools are a lifesaver with the ducks, there HAS to be a better solution! But the Internet is stingy with Duck Water solutions ...

I have a couple of horse buckets, too. They make awesome duck baths.

Splishy splashy. And I have an automatic bowl waterer with a float valve that attaches to a garden hose, but someone stole my attachment piece to use elsewhere, so the automatic waterer either extremely leaky or is not attached to a water source, take your pick.

Thinking about it makes me want a drink.

 

[aart]

I've read that concrete mixing troughs make excellent duck baths, easy to dump and not as much water waste.

http://www.thetoolworkshop.com/doitbestimports16galallpurpmixngtub36255.aspx

You can get them at any of the big box stores and a lot of hardware stores.

 

[BlueMouse]

concrete mixing tubs make great baby baths too! We lived in a one bedroom apartment that only had a shower for several years. I bought a cement mixing tub that fit in the bottom of the shower and all three of our kids bathed in there. On a hot day I'd take it out in the yard and fill it with buckets and they could splash

 

[Frugal Que]

Here is my promised waterer that we use for our ducks, chickens and rabbits. Warning, this is a long post.

Please keep in mind that this is "Stephanie construction", meaning nothing fancy but it works. We already have the nipple waterers around the yard and with our rabbit colonies but I noticed that the animals just prefer open water. We keep the barrel nipple waterers filled anyway since they are already set up.

Barrel Nipple waterers



Ok, here is our new system. If you have any "real" construction experience, you will probably be appalled. My husband let me do the entire project because he is an expert in construction projects but I really wanted to do this myself. So keep in mind that we have a duck yard and the chicken yard is next door but we usually keep the doors to the yards open and the ducks and chickens go into both.

The basic principle is 1/2" pvc between both yards and through our two rabbit colony buildings. I used 10 foot 1/2" pvc pipe, 1/2" pvc valves and 1/2" pvc Ts.

Here is the first connection from the water hose to the pvc:



I attached the pvc pipe to the chain link with zip ties (because I don't know any better).



The pvc pipe goes into a container that the ducks/chickens can't knock over. when the water is turned on, the containers fill with water.



After the ducks use the water, it looks like this:


Gross! But I have discovered that if I turn the water on first and then feed everyone, the system cleans out the crud from the bottom of the containers. There is still some sediment but all the heavy crud starts to float and pour out the container and this is how it looks later.

See how the water is clearing up.

So I ran the pvc pipe around the whole yard and inserted pvc Ts along the way so that I could have multiple water containers around the yard :











Here are the pvc valves that allow me to control the water flow at each container. I kept playing with the flows on each until I was able to get the water to flow evenly and slowly at each site.



Here is the piping through our rabbit colonies:












At first, I didn't glue any pieces together. However, one lesson I learned is that the rabbits are destructive. They will chew and mess with the system if there is no more water so I glued the pipes in the colonies and there is no more problems. I only glued the pvc pipes not the valves.

Each container will just overflow when it gets full, so I just let it happen and planted fruit trees and plants around each container so the water isn't wasted.

Here is a picture of one of my tomato plants at the end of the system. My pipe system ends at this plant. As you can see, if LOVES the water:





Hope this makes sense.


I also wanted to share my "Stephanie construction" pvc feeder. I liked the pvc feeder idea that many people had but I was concerned about rodent control. So this is my version.






Basically, I remove one of the boards each day and the feed for the day falls into the trough below (my trough is one of those long window planters).

 

[Frugal Que]

Here is another idea that I "modified." I saw this feeder somewhere on BYC but I can't find the thread but here is the YouTube video:

I thought what a great idea. But what is that lever? The BYC thread showed a picture of the lever and I was trying to think of what it looked like "to me." To me, it looked like one of those peg board thingys that you hang tools on in the garage.

My husband had some of those so I tested it out and it worked! Here is a pic of the peg board thing that I am talking about. I wrapped it in red duct tape to attract the ducks and chickens:




I discovered that the small ones don't do as well (but that could have been user error) I think the double prongs on the small ones work great though. I guess you can just buy some longer ones that have the double prongs but i was just using what we had at the house.



I drilled holes in the bottom of this compost bucket that we do not use and put the peg board thingy in the hole, put in feed and tested it.



it worked so well that I decided to do the same thing with some extra hanging plant pots that I had. The pots already had holes but they needed to be a little bigger.





The ducks and chickens learned how to use it in just a few minutes.

Since this is "Stephanie construction", I don't know how big the holes are. I just messed with the holes until it was big enough for feed to come out but small enough so that the peg board thingy would not fall out.

 

[perchie.girl]

Wow what a setup Frugal Que.

I too recently learned you dont have to glue to have it be useful. Which is nice if you arent certain where you want stuff and you dont have anything that would mess with it like Rabbits.... or GOATS... LOL. This wouldnt work for me though because my water lines have to be under pressure because I have float valves on the ends of each connection.

But thats me.... In my location I cannot loose a drop of water.... so for my application this wouldnt be frugal for me. My well is an issue....

Hey... Do you raise rabbits on the ground in enclosures? My Grandpa did that in Texas. They would dig fence down about two feet and set fence at about four feet covering about half an acre Then put two rabbits in there. They would dig their own houses and dad said you wouldnt see a single rabbit till feeding time then they would appear out of their cool homes to have dinner. An excellent natural way to keep rabbits.

deb