Rain Water questions

[Ratchnick]

In a dark bucket, bacteria will be the issue not algae IF you add nutrients to the water.

 

[tdan]

In a dark bucket, bacteria will be the issue not algae IF you add nutrients to the water.

Would adding some vinegar kill bacteria or is the alkalinity not correct?

 

[Ratchnick]

Would adding some vinegar kill bacteria or is the alkalinity not correct?

Vinegar is made by bacteria. The short answer is no vinegar won't fix the problem. You could probably use bleach or iodine but i don't think those are appropriate in this instance. You could give your roster booster in a separate bucket.

 

[mendozer]

My buckets last over a month, sometimes less in the summer. Right now they're in the coop but I want to clear them out as they're always dripping a bit (from the nipple use) hence my desire to move them out. I figure they drink water out of puddles so it can't be that bad to have a giant barrel. Plus a larger quantity is less likely to freeze as well. I can always supplement it if we have usual summers. Here in the PNW we can go 3 months without a drop of rain in the June-September months.

 

[Fluffyflufffluff]

I have the bucket and nipple system and have had for years. But now that they have a bigger coop and more chickens, I want a bigger system. I have a 30 gallon rain barrel I plan to put into a PVC pipe with nipples, fed by the rainwater off their coop roof. I was wondering about a few things:

If there's moss on the roof, is that going to contaminate the water...or is that "all natural"?

I don't want algae growing in it, so I'm probably going to paint the plastic tub, but some algae is inevitable as it's going to be resting in the shade.

Any ways to mitigate these concerns or are they not even concerns?

Here in the Philippines it rarely rains, So on the farm, we save rainwater, It seems very harmless for the chickens and ducks to drink.

 

[Willowspirit]

I don’t have a lot of chickens. I’ll start there. For the majority of my girls I have two basins out in their fenced area. One is a garden bird bath basin that is heated to provide water when it freezes. It refills by itself from free rain. The second is a concrete bird bath basin also on the ground that fills the same way. I check them daily for cleanliness and wash as needed. The chickens use both of these and drink out of other pools they find like in black plastic used to cover things. Easy peasy but if I had more chickens it might not be practical.