Keeping food/water clean?

[Moselle]

How do you keep your water and food (water in particular) clean? The waterer in our brooder is off the ground about 6-8 inches, but the water still gets murky/dusty within a half day. We have a 3 gallon waterer and 11lb hanging feeder for our coop which we'll move our chicks out to in a couple weeks. We are planning to keep them in the henhouse. I'd love to hear any suggestions you have.

 

[chickenannie]

Although I don't know what to suggest exactly, I read that for healthy birds, the water should look clean to YOU the human. The less appealing the water looks to you, the less healthy it is for the chickens. Although this may sound like I'm stating the obvious, some people believe that animals don't need "clean water" like people do.

However, I am going to now contradict myself because my own chickens and many of the people on BYC report, chickens seem to looovve drinking yukky yukky water from puddles and poop puddles etc., even when their nice clean water is sitting right next to them. Go figure.

 

[ella]

Yeah clean is a relative term when it comes to chickens.

Other than having it elevated and keeping them from roosting on it, there isn't a whole lot you can do.

If it really really bugs you you can look into drip waterers or something like that.