New member from Ohio

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Bobbelcher1316 said:
Hi I'm Bob and I have chickens.

Not many. 16 currently. I bought a house and 4 acres last year with my fiance and son. The house came with a chicken coop and 7 chickens including 1 rooster. The chickens were free ranged.

After a few months of being owners of chickens, we bought 8 more chickens and then a few months later we hatched 4 more chickens!

I know what you're saying. "Bob those numbers don't add up to 16. And sadly you're right. We have lost a couple chickens. Two were hit by cars on the road and one just plain went missing. We actually had two go missing but then one day after several days of missing, returned.

We didn't know Jack and still don't know diddly about raising chickens but doing our best. I've been trying to make the food and watering of the chickens as easy as possible. Even built this elaborate watering system in their coop only to have the darn chicken nipples fail and ruin the entire thing.

In the spring I'm going to be moving the chickens from their current very old coop to a much more modern corner of a modified animal barn. I'm also planning on making a decent sized run/corral for them off the barn and plan on asking questions for that in abither thread.

Until then howdy from Ohio.

Bob
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Welcome to BYC, Bob!
 
Howdy yourself Bob. Sounds like you've learned a thing or two already. I'm glad you hung in there with them.
You will learn a whole bunch here. Which nipples ruined your coop? I have a watering system with horizontal ones and once had a leak that I had hubby seal them up with JB Weld . No dripping since just FYI. Anyhoo Im glad you're here and enjoy those raptors.
 
Happy hen lover said:
Howdy yourself Bob. Sounds like you've learned a thing or two already. I'm glad you hung in there with them.
You will learn a whole bunch here. Which nipples ruined your coop? I have a watering system with horizontal ones and once had a leak that I had hubby seal them up with JB Weld . No dripping since just FYI. Anyhoo Im glad you're here and enjoy those raptors.
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I bought some of the nipples that have cups and a spring nipple so they hit the little yellow thing and water comes out into the cup for them to drink from. I took a 5 gallon bucket and mounted it up high and plumbed PVC pipe down along the side and mounted these cups and nipples every foot or so. Even put a shut off and union before running it into my isolation cage. The cups just clip on and that's what holds the tension and seal. They don't work at all. I'd go in and find half the cups bone dry and one or two filled to the brim and leaking onto the floor. And 5 gallons of water just about gone. I tried cracking the ball valve just slightly to reduce the gravity pressure of the water but it didn't matter. The nipples leaked.

I tried others mounting them directly into a 5 gallon bucket and they too leaked. Not as bad but definitely enough to be annoying.

I've got a new 5 gallon waterer that fills from the top and is kind of egg shaped. It has a tray at the bottom the fills up with water with a float to stop it from over filling. Its the best waterer i own. And it appears the chickens hate it. Go figure. They have only drank around 1 gallon out of it in the two weeks I've had it. 🙄
 

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