Is it necessary to change water daily?

[Knock Kneed Hen]

I have a 5 gallon waterer and 19 chickens. I fill it and when it gets down 1/4 full I dump it, rinse it out and refill. I scrub it out when I have the chance but it's not every time. Depending on the weather I have to do it less or more. I have my waterer sitting up so they can't kick anything in it so it stays pretty clean. If I'm going in the morning and I know it's going to be a hot day I'll change the water if it's less than half full. I'm thinking about getting a second waterer for the run.

 

[Oven Ready]

and if you don't check to change, you might not give them all of the water that they need.

I think this is really the key statement. It's not so much that your waterers or whatever have to be sterile 24x7, but that they have to be full enough for your chickens to ALWAYS have access to water.

Given the state of some of the things they like to eat, my guess is that they don't need to drink Perrier, but they do need to have something to drink at all times.​

 

[burquechick]

Yeah, I have a few of those metal self-watering things. I usually keep them up on a screen covered table inside the coop and wash and refill every 3-4 days or so, nothing more. Maybe more in the summer, like every 2-3 days. Lately, since I've been keeping them on the ground for chicks, I've been swishing and dumping out the nasty water in the drinking part and letting it refill itself every other day. Between those days, I wash and refill it completely, however full it is. As soon as the chicks can fly up to the table, it's right back to every 3-4 days for me.

 

[PortageGirl]

I spray hard and/or brush out and refill the 1 gallon outdoor waterers every day, which I use in the summer for my free ranging hens. The one in their coop, is a 3 gallon metal one, it gets tipped out to recirculate the water every day and gets a scrub out every other or every third day when I'm refilling it. It's up high enough to stay mostly clean, it's not perfect but my birds seem ok with it. They aren't in the coop very much in the summer, and in the winter when it's cooler and they're indoors more, it needs refilling more often but it's less grubby so the every other day thing still holds.

Speckledhen's maxim is best, but within reason, I backslide a bit.

 

[my4ladies]

This is exactly what I was hoping for as responses...different opinions from different people. Thank you so much!

 

[Tomhusker]

I have a couple of half gallon jugs hanging in the coop with a water nipple in each one. I keep the lids on them, loosely to avoid a vacuum, so they are pretty well sealed. I check every day and add more every other day or so. I do rinse them out once in a while, but only if I think about it before carrying out the water. I don't make a special trip out for them.

 

[Whitewater]

I check their water (both the little one in the hen house and the 1 gallon in the run) daily, looking to see if it's nasty or low or whathaveyou -- but I don't change it every day. It just doesn't need it. I only have 3 hens and both water containers are up on decently high blocks so they cannot poop in it or otherwise get it dirty. Wild critters can't drink from them either, since everything is fully enclosed.

And I only have 3 birds, which makes a huge difference. A small flock doesn't dirty things up as quickly as a larger one may!

I do, however, give it/them a thorough scrub with nice hot water (it's plastic) to clean it whenever I empty and re-fill.

Am considering adding a bit of apple cider vinegar, though at the moment it's not really necessary.



Whitewater

 

[debo4702]

We have 5 gallon automatic waters that hang in our large runs the bucket sits on the outside of the run and is filled twice a day and in this heat we also add a frozen gallon water jug to try and keep the water cool. We take everything down once a week and wash with a bleach solution then put everthing back up. Other smaller waters get cleaned everyday when we refill them we have a small brush hung on each chicken tractor for a quick clean when we refill that way I'm never walking around looking for the brush.

 

[damselfish]

Outdoor water is in the those inexpensive black rubber bowls from the feed store. Those get "swiped and swished" I think somebody above called it, and then refilled, every day.

The coops have the metal double-wall founts, up on blocks. Those get taken out each morning and given a quick circular fling that tosses out any shavings from the drinking area. They get refilled about once a week, as needed.

I do not disinfect waterers except maybe a couple times a year or if I see something nasty in it. I figure if they're eating bugs and worms, perfect disinfection is not their highest concern.

But note, they free range, they have several waterers to choose from, I move the outdoor ones so there's never a muddy area around them, and for whatever reason, my birds don't choose to walk in the waterers. So a different situation might call for a different routine.

For what it's worth, I follow Speckledhen's advice to the extent that I make sure my waterers always LOOK like I could take a drink out of them.

 

[The Chicken Lady]

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