OK I promised Vegas Chick a pic of the waterer. I got the drinking cup waterers from ebay. They came with pipe connectors but I didn't use them. We just wrapped the threads with teflon tape and screwed them into the holes we predrilled into the food grade barrels (make sure the drilled holes are smaller than the OD of the threads, you can always make the hole larger but once you go too big you're in trouble). The barrels were $20 at the surplus store. They have white or blue. I got blue cause I didn't want to have to worry about algae growth and the white barrels let too much light in. Excuse the dirty blanket on top. We have been covering them on super cold nights figuring that would slow down heat loss.
Oh, I forgot to mention, the cup waterers are trigger activated. The chickens have to hit the lever inside the cup to break the seal for a moment to get water to flow into the cup. They figured this out by themselves immediately though. I thought we might have to show them how to use them but they ran right over and in a few seconds had it down pat.
Sunny! Thanks so much! What a great setup! I love it. I think I'd like to try something like this for my Utah/Summer coop setup. I'm using 5 gal. bucket waterers with chicken nipples there but they are white and in the summer sun all day and the algae growth is just overwhelming. I'd try this here but hate to consider how I'd get ice into it in the early/late summer to cool down the water, plus the size is a bit prohibitive here as well.
