looking for suggestions on water heater....

[thedoors5to1]

so i bought this chicken/duck waterer last summer from my local tack and feed. its a plastic 3 gallon automatic waterer, it looks like this:

but what i forgot about when i bought it was this winter, i live in Rhode Island and it gets cold. already been below 40 degrees.
i went onto the manufacturers site (http://www.hotshotproducts.com/) to try and find a product they made to keep this waterer from freezing and potentially cracking and breaking (it was 30 dollars) but the company doesnt make anything for the product..

does any one have a source of a cheap product that can heat this plastic waterer..?
im open to all suggestions and my only ideas were a heat mat underneath the plastic waterer, or some sort of bendable heated rod that could go into the water trough...
some help would really be great because what my google searches have found arent so great...nearly nothing comes up when i type in "electric water heater for chickens" or "pets"
im pretty upset thinking about it.. considering i saw a few posts about water heaters before mine and i read through them before posting.... theres a 3 gallon heated waterer that sells for 38 dollars... geesh wish i had that where i bought mine or i wouldnt have this problem....

i have basic ideas of what i could use, i just cant seem to find the products...
thanks

 

[digitS']

Last winter, I was finally intending to go "automated" but then couldn't find a heated dog bowl locally

. What I was going to try was putting the dog bowl under the the chicken's waterer. Filling the bowl with sand, if it didn't transfer heat well enuf, was also part of my thinking.

Since shipping was nearly the cost of a bowl purchased on the internet, I did what I always do: Go to the smallest waterer that works and show up with a sprinkler can of warm water from the house at least once daily. When I'm sure that it will only freeze overnight, I often put the waterer in a bucket at "lights off in the coop" and bring the bucket indoors. It sits on the floor in the bathroom close to the backdoor.

So much for coop automation and the miracle of electricity . . .

Steve

 

[Mac in Wisco]

You can use a cinder block as a base, insert a drop light in the hole, and cover it with a piece of tin. Set the plastic waterer on top of this and it will provide enough heat to keep it from freezing.