new chicken owner

[13chickens]

first post, hope I do it right. working on a coop for 13 med to large chickens "layers". the coop has a wood floor and its 8ft by16 ft in size. it was a falling down until we started fixing it.
first question the birds use vertical nipples right now from a bucket, I would like to do a rain collection system and have the water inside. My concern is that the water will rot the floor. how should I catch water spill or leaks. thinking of a floor coating that I read about here blac jack or something. please help thanks

 

[BantamLover21]

Glad you joined us!

My nipple waterers don't leak/drip, so I don't have problems with them. If you're worried about the floor, though, I would cover the waterer area with a tarp (beneath any bedding) or some sort of rubber mat.

 

[evemfoster]

first post, hope I do it right. working on a coop for 13 med to large chickens "layers". the coop has a wood floor and its 8ft by16 ft in size. it was a falling down until we started fixing it.
first question the birds use vertical nipples right now from a bucket, I would like to do a rain collection system and have the water inside. My concern is that the water will rot the floor. how should I catch water spill or leaks. thinking of a floor coating that I read about here blac jack or something. please help thanks

You could also put the water container on a old water heater drain pan and pipe the drain outside. You can get fiberglass or plastic ones at recycling centers that are inexpensive. Would come in handy if you had extra heavy rains and the water collection system overflowed.

 

[13chickens]

well, thanks for the info, not sure if I will try an old shower pan or maybe the cups for water, seems people here say they don't spill water when they are used. this is important to me since the floor is wood. any thoughts?????

 

[Folly's place]

You can cover the wood floor with vinyl sheet flooring, or something similar. Rubber stall mats or sheet flooring of some sort; I've seen things in livestock supply catalogs that loo interesting. The wood will rot out someday, depending on the moisture and chicken poo that sits on it. Mary

 

[ChirpyChicks1]

My floor is heavy duty plywood so in trying to protect it I put down a loose sheet of vinyl. Regret it big time, it would actually trap water under it and now I have the beginnings of rot. I've taken the vinyl out and now mix the pine shavings/straw around often to keep everything dry and its been so much better. I tried to find the back jack stuff before I went with vinyl and I couldn't find it anywhere. I had looked online and it seemed very expensive for the amount that I actually needed. It might be worth it though for your coop, just didn't work out for me.

You have a big coop so it might not be an issue but I've seen people talk about not putting water in the coop because it increases the humidity. So thats something you might want to look into.

 

[eggsr4me]

I have a plywood floor in my coop too, I put a sheet of plastic down and then I layer in the straw. I use the deep litter method. I keep a good amount of straw down and then about every 4 months I change it. I pull out the plastic with the straw on it and sweep and clean all the corners and then I put in a fresh piece of plastic and add my straw. This works well for me and the girls love to spread the straw and make little nests for theirselves. Also under their roost I drape plastic to catch all the droppings. This has saved alot of cleaning in the coop. I clean out their "poop trough" as I call it. once or twice a week.

 

[pdirt]

Why bother with a drip pan or plastic under the vertical nipples? They DO drip a lot of water when in use by the chickens, at least that's been my experience. Yes, it will much more quickly rot your floor unless you do something to catch the water. Or use the horizontal nipples instead, they don't seem to drip water when in use. My only recommendation is to have at least one horizontal nipple per 5-7 birds. If you have any cross-beaked birds they will need a different water source because (depending on the severity of their cross-beak) they will not be able to use the horizontal nipples.

Additionally, I'm not sure if it freezes in winter where you are, but I found much less problems with the nipples freezing up (using a submersible heater in the bucket) using the horizontal nipples over the vertical ones.

http://www.amazon.com/Horizontal-Si...8-1&keywords=horizontal+nipple#cm_cr_dpwidget

Thread comparing horizontal and vertical nipples:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...-vs-horizontal-spring-loaded-watering-nipples

 

[13chickens]

So the horizontal ripples don't leak? Also it seem s the birds soul lots of water from the nipples while drinking from the vertical nipples. Thanks again.

 

[pdirt]

So the horizontal ripples don't leak? Also it seem s the birds soul lots of water from the nipples while drinking from the vertical nipples. Thanks again.

In my experience, neither the vertical or horizontal nipples leak. By "leak", I mean that they don't drip water like a leaky faucet would, when no one or no bird is near it. But the vertical nipples do drip excessively when being using by the chickens. When they push the metal rod with their beak to release the water, most of that water drips onto the bird and the ground and only a little bit goes in their mouth. Think of it like a drinking fountain...when you drink from a drinking fountain, most of the water goes down the drain and you're only able to slurp up some of the water. The design of the horizontal nipples is just plain superior and I don't know why someone hadn't figured that out a long time ago! The only downside of them is they are too small for a cross-beaked bird to be able to use them and they cost a bit more. Unless you're watering 100+ birds, you're not going to really notice the cost difference that much. I also think that it is slightly more difficult for the birds to get the same amount of water from them (compared the the vert nipples) and for that reason, you probably want to add extra nipples. I think 6-8 birds per horizontal nipple.