How does broody raised chick drink?

[Jynuine]

So here is our nursery setup- how does baby normally get water? I think the water setup is too tall for her to reach?
Also, the water is clean it is just vitamin fortified and has some litter in it from mama. We change it every day to once every 2 days.

 

[Percheron chick]

Momma shows the babies where the water is just like she does the food. She's usually overly enthusiastic and will dump it. The chicks need the water dish to only be about 1 inch tall for them to reach it. Too tall and they can drown in it. I'll use something like a jar lid the first few days and you just have to watch it and refill it.

 

[donrae]

Agree that's not a great waterer for a chick, you're going to either have a chick in the water or a flipped bowl when momma starts scratching around. Try a chick waterer like the plastic base you screw on a mason jar. Set it up on a brick or something to keep the litter out of it, once momma gets to scratching around she'll fling litter everywhere. A newly hatched chick is quite capable of jumping up on a brick to drink.

 

[Jynuine]

Awesome- I was thinking of just putting our milk jug waterers that we have for regular chicks in there (hang on the corner) with a nipple and showing the baby where it is in a week or so.... that way we can reduce the amount of wetness in there.

 

[ochochicas]

We got one of the smaller poultry waterers from the feed store. There is about a 1/2 lip on it so they can can reach the water and there is no fear of drowning.

 

[YardBird192]

We have used the incubator for our previous hatches, but we had a hen who went broody so we put five eggs under her and expect something December 11th. She is nesting in the coop about four feet off the floor. I guess I'll learn from trial and error, but I don't want the babies to fall out and get hurt. How do the new mom's act when they hatch? Do they stay with them until they are good and fluffy? I plan to prepare the floor to move them down myself if the hen doesn't attack me. I read other posts about not letting other hens around them. How long would you say...two weeks?

 

[aart]

Awesome- I was thinking of just putting our milk jug waterers that we have for regular chicks in there (hang on the corner) with a nipple and showing the baby where it is in a week or so.... that way we can reduce the amount of wetness in there.

I've gotten 3 day old chicks to drink from a horizontal nipple in a pint juice bottle.
Set it on brick(s) to raise to a good height as the grew.
Nice and clean and easy peasy.

 

[ochochicas]

Here is something interesting I tried with my last hatch. I started giving water to my chicks with a syringe as soon as they hatched. A couple of them were very weak because they were malpositioned in the egg. I wanted to make sure they were all drinking. I gave them a small watering dish, but I also fed them with the syringe several times a day. They LOVED drinking the drops from the syringe. When they saw it coming they would all run over to greet me. Now that they are a month old they are super friendly. I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that they think I'm the momma because I was feeding them water with a plastic "beak".