Rain Water

[Rchick2]

So I am sure everyone at some point in their chicken keeping career have thought about how your waterer is too small or not efficient enough. I have been thinking about just leaving a bucket outside and letting it fill up with rain water and then refilling my waterer from there instead of walking it all the way over to the hose and back almost everyday now. But after thinking for a while I started to think about all of the gross parasites and other critter that could be in the water and I decided against it. Is there any filter I can put in to help with this. I have also considered putting chicken waterer nipples on a bucket and leaving it outside, or even going as fancy as getting gutters and lead it to a big barrel that holds the water and then putting the nipples on there. I could also find a way to heat my roof so in the winter the snow will ideally melt right into the gutters and flow down into the barrels and also heat the barrels. Please help with any ideas! Thanks!

 

[Chick2chicken]

You could try this
http://waterislife.com/clean-water/filter-systems

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

I use bucket to water all my poultry. I dump them daily and refill them. If I have chicks about I switch to rubber bowls, or small waterers for a while so they don't drown in them.

I see you are actually asking about keeping a bucket of barrel full of water to fill your waterers from. We do that with our rain barrel. The top open ones get nasty and need dumping a lot. This year we bought on with a screen top to keep the mosquitoes out and the algae from growing. Works great. In the colder months we remove it.

We do have a horse tank in winter with a tank heater in it, which if the water line freezes up to it we will shovel snow into it to melt which works well, but running a tank heater gets expensive, so if we didn't have donkeys to water I would just carry water out of the house daily, which I do anyways because I give my chickens warm water in winter.

Not sure if I answered your question though.

 

[Rchick2]

I use bucket to water all my poultry. I dump them daily and refill them. If I have chicks about I switch to rubber bowls, or small waterers for a while so they don't drown in them.

I see you are actually asking about keeping a bucket of barrel full of water to fill your waterers from. We do that with our rain barrel. The top open ones get nasty and need dumping a lot. This year we bought on with a screen top to keep the mosquitoes out and the algae from growing. Works great. In the colder months we remove it.

We do have a horse tank in winter with a tank heater in it, which if the water line freezes up to it we will shovel snow into it to melt which works well, but running a tank heater gets expensive, so if we didn't have donkeys to water I would just carry water out of the house daily, which I do anyways because I give my chickens warm water in winter.

Not sure if I answered your question though.

You did a pretty good job. Heating wise I am concerned because I have a chicken water heater that you sit a waterer on and it heat the water. Do you think I could buy a bigger one of those for a barrel or bucket?

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

It might keep a bucket of water thawed depending on your temperatures, but a barrel may require a stock tank heater. Ours is on a timer, so it doesn't run all day and it cuts the electricity by half. Most stock tank heaters will have an internal thermostat too, and will shut off at temperatures about 35 degrees I believe.