How do you manage iced water?

[saysfaa]

A cheap and easy hack to keep your waterer from freezing is get a clean empty 20oz plastic bottle and fill it completely full with corse rock salt. Then secure the lid on it extremely tight, and toss it in your chickens waterer.

Is this what you do yourself?

 

[saysfaa]

How long have you been using it and how long/cold has your most severe cold spell been?

Edit to add: I'm not meaning to be contentious, I just see this a lot but nearly always by people who don't use it.

 

[RonnieJB]

Yes. The thermal temp of the rock salt stays above freezing. That why it melts ice when you pour it on frozen iced walkways, driveways, and parking lots during winter. Same thing happens to keep you chickens waterer from freezing. The plastic bottle of rock salt acts as a heater.

Im going to try this tomorrow morning too late right now as it's already 7 pm. But its a quick and easy fix. I dont have a heater on hand but i do have ice salt. I was simply taking a 2 gallon bucket of water and pouring fresh water into the chickens pans. This week its been freezing overnight. I was just popping it out in the morning and pouring fresh in.

 

[saysfaa]

Just rock salt in the bottle? No water too? For how big a waterer? Is it an open topped or closed topped waterer? Is the watere insulated? It keeps the water in the waterer from freezing ever - or for how long?

I don't have electricity in my coop and it gets cold here too.

 

[Mom4ever]

I am home all day with my girls so I a few times a day go outside with a gallon of water and give them some fresh drinkable water in the runs. Most days the flocks free range and we used a large heated water bowl last year. Not sure if we will do the same. I did read in this thread that the black rubber bowls if place in the sunniest area stays warmer due to the solar heating.

 

[saysfaa]

Hm, y'all know salt (sodium chloride) doesn't melt the ice on the sidewalks by heating it, though, right? It melts it because salt water has a lower freezing point than pure water. The water is just as cold as the ice was.

But if the salt doesn't touch the water, that isn't what is happening.

 

[StinkyAcres]

Hm, y'all know salt (sodium chloride) doesn't melt the ice on the sidewalks by heating it, though, right? It melts it because salt water has a lower freezing point than pure water. The water is just as cold as the ice was.

But if the salt doesn't touch the water, that isn't what is happening.

Yes, I think it might be that the bottle is moving around in the water keeping the water from freezing longer.

 

[Suzz]

Do you keep the dish turned on all day/night? I just bought one (first time chicken keeper) and am worried about what happens if the water is gone but the bowl is still turned on. Do you dump the extra water each night and put new water in in the morning and turn the bowl on? The one I bought is a manual on/off button, nothing fancy and automatic. I have so much unnecessary anxiety about this

 

[Suzz]

I have this large heated dish it never runs dry and I never unplug it

 

[Show Sebright]

I is interesting to me. Like I didn’t know that water heaters existed. For me we get frost maybe once a year. Never worried about frozen water. In fact we freeze water to keep the water cold all ‘winter’.