Rain barrels

[Chick_a_dee]

I'm putting eavestroph on my chicken house, and I'm considering buying two rain barrels to feed the water into, modern ones with hose hookups and the filtering mesh...

Can I feed the water in them, that is filtered through the mesh to my chickens? ... I know you can use the water for horses which we intend to do, use the water from the ones on the barn to fill our 100 gallon stock tanks, but can I also give my chickens rain barrel water? We live on a well that isn't all that great and needs to be filled in and have a new well drilled, but thats for the next couple years as its workable, but I want to cut as much of my livestock off the well as possible, first the dogs went, then horses will be off the well, and I want to take the chickens off even if they don't use as much water as say a horse or dog.

 

[lleighmay]

I don't see why you can't; in fact I'm planning to put three in my run (raised high enough to fill the waterers) myself. The way I see it if they can drink out of puddles without harm what comes out of my barrels will be much cleaner. I do plan to make sure I get food grade barrels though. Looking forward to hearing what other people think about this.

 

[Chick_a_dee]

Quote:
That was my opinion on it, there is a company near us that sells old doors, and building supplies called Envirosponsible... and they sell and manufacture rain barrels as well so we're looking at them as they are very Enviro/green oriented. The green aspect of it is as important as the well aspect, we'd rather not use the water from our well if we can just utilize what nature gives us.

It brings a whole new light to the idea of menonites haha, theres a menonite family by us and I COMPLETELY respect them and how they are able to live so sufficiently... and THEIR MONTHLY BILLS MUST BE AMAZING...LIKE NOTHING AT ALL.

 

[lleighmay]

I'm with you. Eventually (when I get all my animal housing updated- goats, dogs, etc) my plan is to set it up with rainwater for them supplemented by well water only as needed. If I can figure out a way to efficiently do the same for the garden without blocking the light I'll do that too. I've always been big on salvage and recycling and I see this as just one more step toward self-sufficiency. I'm sure I'll never "get off the grid" entirely (at least not soon) but I like thinking of solutions to work toward it.

 

[Chick_a_dee]

Oh I know... We chose to refit and refurbish an existing building rather than build a new coop, we have an old 1870s ice shed sitting out front the house doing nothing, it has a loft, it has a big old bunker in it that would have been used for meats, and its huge... right on the valley by the side of the house so lots of shade for the chickens in the run, and its great! just needs some fixing... footings and foundation, new wiring and panel (IT HAS ITS OWN PANEL!) and new siding which is relatively cheap to do.

We already feed ours dogs off the rain barrel out back, and water our veggie patch and garden from it, but lately we havent had to water since the rain has been insane. Our dogs have a filtered electric waterbowl anyway, but we would feed it to them in just a bowl if we needed to.

 

[hoosier]

We just installed one about a week and a half ago. Of course, there hasn't been a drop of rain since! I know that once I get used to not having to carry water I will hate to empty it for the winter.