How to get birds to drink from second waterer?

[HeathenHavenHomestead]

Mine are 10-11 weeks old

How old are the chicks? I found if I simply gave them a way to reach the nipples, they'd use them:

View attachment 2805726

 

[rosemarythyme]

Mine are 10-11 weeks old

Then they're old enough to use horizontal nipples (the chick in my earlier photo was 4-5 weeks), either by learning from watching the adults or you can pick them up and use their beaks to toggle the nipples.

 

[apollowikia]

Are they identical in look?
I know chickens can be skeptical.
I switched mine from an open gravity system to a horizontal nipple bucket waterer.
I had to completely remove the gravity one in order to get them to drink from the other.
Since I have chicks that are too small to reach the horizontal nipples I placed a gravity one back out and they now ignore the horizontal one again and drink from the gravity one. And will drain it completely and not go back to the horizontal nipples.

They look mostly the same besides one having a pink base and one having a red base.
I'd love to switch to nipples in the future but I have to wait until the ducks are big enough to go to the barn that my in-law works at.

 

[3KillerBs]

I've never had any issues with my chickens finding all the waterers I put into the pen (currently 4, IIRC). But you could pick up a few chickens and dip their beaks into the second waterer just to make sure they know it's there.

How old are the chicks? I found if I simply gave them a way to reach the nipples, they'd use them:

View attachment 2805726

That's what I do. I've always had taller and shorter chickens and ended up setting everything up for the tall ones and putting a few blocks or bricks down to give the short ones somewhere to stand.

It reduces waste and spillage.