Lowest maintenance feeding/water

[Carson213]

Got my water figured out. Rain into food safe barrel...into hose to another food safe barrel...with floater to turn on and off...with the outlet that turns a heater on and off in both barrels. waiting on second heater. just ordered a hog feeder that holds 50lbs of food. my back roll outs hold 200 eggs. going to add an egg table belt to the roll outs up to the egg “cleaner”...essentially sand paper...so...the hens will be good for ten days...but if we leave i would have somebody check them every 5 days...due to being neurotic

 

[Carson213]

the metal lid on the barrel is just to keep them from flying on top of it

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Can confirm this works for a 275 gal water tote, too! (ok, the watering cups are attached to PVC extending out of the tote). Here in FL, it doesn't get cold enough, long enough, for the tote to freeze through, and I'm guessing the 2" PVC will be fine, too.

 

[B-Goock]

I had a similar setup. 55 gal barrel that I put 2" of foam around had an old pool wall that I used to protect the foam, wrapped around it. Had a small fou tain pump & heater ran from a thermostat when it got down towards freezing. The fountain pump sucked warm water from the barrel and pumped it to the end of the nipple waterer header and then flowed back to the barrel.. normal operation the header was gravity feed

 

[ro ro]

what i did i got 2 55 gal soda concentrate plastic barrels and set them on their side and ran plasic pipe to coup and installed 8 chicken water cups --- also got a 55gal plastic screw top barrel and put 3in 90degree elbows in it to set about 1/2 to 1 inch from bottom----this will hold about 8 bags of feed i have yet too fill completely but i use layering to fill it i put in laying pellets 3-4 bags 1 bag of scratch 1 bag of corn and 1/2 bag of black oil sunflower seeds ----- this last months and is sealed by elbow being so close to bottom & the feed to stop animals from crawling into the barrel --and the water feeds the cups for 3-4 months [must be hight than cups for total capacity to be available even tho pipe is buried to coup the barrels are high enough to empty and only lower pipe will not flow to cups once barrels are empty ------- i do still soak about a half scoop of laying pellets and feed it to chickens the next day to make feed last longer as the soaked feed has swollen and takes les to fill the birds but there are days i do not do this and they just feed out of the feeder and what ever they scratch in the run [i do give them about a third of a scoop on occasion of scratch with some sunflower seed in it] usually when i coolect eggs to get them to other end of run because i have a couple that insist on laying under the coup [its about 3ft 6in of the groun 8x8ft]and run is about 25ftx 8ft plus the size of inside of coup ----- i have 33 hens and 2 roosters ----- they are very sexually active ---- recieveved chicks april 1st of 2021 ------ loosing a couple eggs a day by peckers so next project is roll-a-way nesting boxes fun fun fun