Making poultry nipples!

[blackdog043]

This is an old thread and a dumb-ish question - but how do you teach the chickens to drink from the nipple? Do they just figure it out?

Also, what do you do in the winter to keep it from freezing? Right now, we've used one of the big metal waterers on the big metal heater for the last 3 winters - but I'd like to improve our process.

They will learn, make sure you take all other water sources away. Make the change when you can be around to see that they are using the nipples. It took my chickens less then 10 minutes to figure them out.

To keep them from freezing, you have to use horizontal nipples and put a stock tank deicer in the bucket. You will have clean unfrozen water 24/7.

Vertical nipples tend to drip and will freeze even with a deicer in the bucket.