My Chickens Drink Foul Water

[ShrekDawg]

Chickens dont like clean water. Seriously. Mine qouks rather drink out of a shrinking warm stagnant rain puddle at the end of the driveway than drink out of a clean fountain.

Mine too!! And when I dump the gross dirty water and refill it with fresh, they try to drink out the mud/poop puddle newly created!! I try to shoo them away cause I don’t want them to get sick, not that I don’t clean the run but just ew, but they would rather drink out of that gross little dirty puddle than the fresh clean water I just put in the waterer.

 

[ArianDolympia]

I agree with you! I have a 5 gallon waterer that I hung above the run floor to keep the water somewhat cleaner. If I forgot to cover the run before it's rain, there will be some small puddles of water in the run the next day. My chickens would happily drunk the dirty water from the puddles instead of the clean water, though.

Chickens dont like clean water. Seriously. Mine qouks rather drink out of a shrinking warm stagnant rain puddle at the end of the driveway than drink out of a clean fountain.

 

[rosemarythyme]

Chickens dont like clean water. Seriously. Mine qouks rather drink out of a shrinking warm stagnant rain puddle at the end of the driveway than drink out of a clean fountain.

So true. Drips off the roof or a fence, a muddy puddle, rainwater caught on the edge of an upturned bucket... those are all more appealing to them than a waterer filled with clean, fresh water.

 

[New2Chicks97]

Mine like the drinking cups a lot and they are fairly easy to clean out. However mine will drink out of pretty much anything though and don’t care much if they have made it dirty or not. They also love to drink from puddles on the ground. All winter they used a heated dog bowl. Right now they are using a 5 gallon metal fount type until the weather is consistently nice enough to break out the big 55 gallon barrel with the water cup system.

They cups are nice in that the water doesn’t get stinky even if they get a little dirty because it isn’t tons of water or dirt.