DIY Watering suggestions please!

[David1998]

Ok, on training your birds to use them… put the nipples on your container, make sure it is not air tight, these are the reverse of a water font. Fill with water and leave enough room for some ice. The ice will condense the water vapor and form little drops of water on the outside of the 'bucket'. The birds will see these and peck at them, this is a first step, also when you place the waterer, prime the nipples by pushing in on them a few times to fill the tiny 'cup' on the bottom of the red nipple. This catches most any dripping (horizontal nipples are much drier in the coop than vertical ones) and helps attract the birds. You can then show one or two, or just stand back and watch it happen. I suggest removing all other sources of water.

I know this seems counter intuitive, but it seems to work best. If you can get a few pecking, the rest will do the same and in short order you will have all of them on nipples. As an aside, I've been on this for almost a week now, and my wife still wants to put the old plastic font back into the brooder, she worries they are not drinking. Well all are alive and doing just fine thank you, and I feel better because the water stays clean. Please make sure you use a lid, if a bird were to fly up there and fall in, it would drown. And it keeps 'stuff' out of the water.

I think I spoke on heaters a few posts back in this thread, but I use a stock tank heater, bird bath deicers work as well, and with horizontal nipples, they should resist freezing very well.

In regard to starting my birds at two weeks instead of at three days, my little banty chicks were just too small for me to feel good about doing this, until they had a good dose of spunk in them. So this is why I held off on introducing them to the nipples. Regular full size birds can use them at about three days. I have heard of some folks taking the chicks from the shipping box and dipping the beak on a nipple, but I don't.

Anyway, it is easy to do, a drill and a bucket, some ice and a lid, please remember to vent the lid somewhere.

Best to you folks and your birds,

RJ

Thanks for all the very helpful information.

 

[pawtraitart]

I'd like to make one like that. Would you share a few construction details including where I could buy the horizontal nipples? Most of the ones I've seen are vertical.

You can get the nipples directly from Susan at All'bout Chickens if you want to get more than the 5 pack she offers on Amazon. http://allboutchickens.com

 

[73luke]

I've created a waterer out of an old water cooler bottle. I cut the top part off then inverted it before tapping it back together. I then placed materiel over the hole witha weighted bowl over that, this allows the bottle to fill up itself when it rains but the material keeps bugs and debris out. This does then run to 3 nipples, which having tried the normal chicken waterers are by far the best solution. ( water looks cloudy but it has Apple cider vinegar in )