River Water

[aoxa]

If your flock was free ranging, I can promise you that they would drink that water. In fact, I'm pretty confident in saying that they would walk around a dish of processed water to get there.

It would depend on how fast the stream was moving.

 

[what did I do]

What other options of water do you have for your chickens? I'm just pointing out that there may not be another good option for water. Sometimes you got to do what you got to do.

 

[nellynelly]

no upstream mining. the valley is used mostly for dairy cattle, but developmnet has increased. the river is ****** upriver (drinking water supply). i think that is why the flow rate decrease so much when it is dry.

i would not drink the water myself, but it does not have a foul odor. i am mostly worried about the high sediment load. i may do some experiment to try and settle it out.

thanks all.

 

[aoxa]

no upstream mining.  the valley is used mostly for dairy cattle, but developmnet has increased.  the river is ****** upriver (drinking water supply).   i think that is why the flow  rate decrease so much when it is dry.

i would not drink the water myself,  but it does not have a foul odor. i am mostly worried about the high sediment load.  i may do some experiment to try and settle it out.

thanks all. 

Just do some testing to see how the levels are for contamination. If they are low, go for it.

Would you swim in it? If you would swim in it, I would say go for it. It may be your only option. Better than them not drinking at all.

 

[just me]

no upstream mining. the valley is used mostly for dairy cattle, but developmnet has increased. the river is ****** upriver (drinking water supply). i think that is why the flow rate decrease so much when it is dry.

i would not drink the water myself, but it does not have a foul odor. i am mostly worried about the high sediment load. i may do some experiment to try and settle it out.

thanks all.

When my Dad worked with the local city water works, I went and toured the "plant" sometimes. They removed sediment by filtering, first through gravel, then sand, then cotton, then charcoal. I'm just saying that maybe if you could somehow "pass" the water through some sand, it would help get rid of some of the sediment???

 

[suezqz_64]

rainwater would only work in the wet season (and yes, we are installing a small catchment from the coop roof). but the dry season is when the river water quality is worse.

i would not eat out of the compost pile, or cow pie, horse manure, ect, but chickens do it with glee. yes i agree that the water should be "clean", but chickens (jungle fowl) have lived and evolved without the aid of man (or his chlorine).

E.coli is just one micro organism that is all ready present in a chickens digestive track. it is best to wash your hands after handing them anyway.

You are correct, your chickens are already acclimated to your local bacteria. I really don't think drinking the river water should be a problem, especially since you have little options. You may consider getting water from the river and letting it sit overnight to see if the sediment sinks to the bottom and your girls can have clear water. Given that chickens use grit to chew their food internally, I do not believe added sediment should be a problem for them.

 

[7L Farm]

If your flock was free ranging, I can promise you that they would drink that water. In fact, I'm pretty confident in saying that they would walk around a dish of processed water to get there.

No question they would drink it. But why give them more of it. I sell eggs & can't afford some customer getting sick from my eggs. I can't take chances with contaminated water source that I know nothing about. Shoot I don't want to get sick either. I clean my waterer everyday 365 days a year.

 

[Ridgerunner]

 No question they would drink it. But why give them more of it. I sell eggs & can't afford some customer getting sick from my eggs. I can't take chances with contaminated water source that I know nothing about. Shoot I don't want to get sick either. I clean my waterer everyday 365 days a year.

Because it will probably do them more good than harm, let alone the availability, cost, and convenience factors. Sterile water won't do any harm, but it will not have the trace elements or other nutrients they can use.

Nellynelly, I have not seen anything in what you wrote that would cause me any concern whatsoever. I think you are overworrying about the sediment, but there are two basic ways to get it out. I'm talking about suspended solids, not stuff that is dissolved in the water.

One is called settling. Slow the water down and allow gravity to drag the particles to the bottom. You can either put it into a basin and let it set a while, or you can just let it flow into a basin much larger than the pipe it is coming into and skim the water off the top on the other sde with an overflow pipe. Letting gravity do the work is a very standard way industry uses to separate things in a liquid. Let a small pipe feed the liquid into a large tank and have a small pipe take the stuff out of the other end. You just have to remove the stuff that falls out as necessary.

The other way is filtration. This one is a little harder because the filtering medium will get plugged and you need to either replace it or clean it. Sand is what nature uses a lot for filtration. Drinking water from springs and wells has been filtered through sand. People pay ridiculous prices for bottled water that has been cleaned mainly by Nature filtering it through sand and dissolving various minerals as it flows through sand and rocks. But for your purposes you can use a fine screen, cloth, or about anything that will filter out the chunks.

 

[Achickenwrangler#1]

I don't know anything more laden with bacteria than a pile of horse manure, but my chickens eat all the bugs crawling around in there. They will drink from a muddy puddle, lap water swirling with clay sediment...nobody has keeled over yet. The sediment will not bother them, what about chemical and pesticides though? If it third world, maybe they don't use much of it. I also notice my chickens enjoy eating the fertilizer pellets out of store bought plants, their feathers look especially good this year, and all the chicks had the right number of toes. However, rain water in a holding tank works good, but that too can be laden with insects and algae, no worries, no deaths from it. Water testing costs a pretty penny, and you must be specific in what you are test in for, each test cost extra. Probably enough to buy a new flock of chickens. Take a drive upstream and look around, what is exactly up there unusual.

 

[aoxa]

I don't know anything more laden with bacteria than a pile of horse manure, but my chickens eat all the bugs crawling around in there. They will drink from a muddy puddle, lap water swirling with clay sediment...nobody has keeled over yet. The sediment will not bother them, what about chemical and pesticides though? If it third world, maybe they don't use much of it. I also notice my chickens enjoy eating the fertilizer pellets out of store bought plants, their feathers look especially good this year, and all the chicks had the right number of toes. However, rain water in a holding tank works good, but that too can be laden with insects and algae, no worries, no deaths from it. Water testing costs a pretty penny, and you must be specific in what you are test in for, each test cost extra. Probably enough to buy a new flock of chickens. Take a drive upstream and look around, what is exactly up there unusual.

I can get a full water test for $30.

Algae is not what worries me. It's the fact that there is human waste in there. Some things people flush down the toilet I would not want coming in contact with my birds. Maybe I am crazy. We have a river here that I would NEVER let my birds drink water from. Fish are dying from the pollution in the water. Maybe I can't separate what I imagine is a polluted river from what I am used to.