Should chicken water ever smell like sewage

[JacinLarkwell]

My messy birds get hanging or mounted waterers. My others I dump daily if there is poop or lots of dirt in there. If it's mostly clean (a feather or two and a few grains of dirt count as clean to me), I just fill it back to the top. Some birds are just godawful about making messes, others are so clean it's amazing.

As for it not being how they would drink naturally, true, but I can almost guarantee that the climate, their feed and their housing is not what they would do naturally in the wild as well, so....

 

[jgarner1327]

I was looking for validation as to whether water should smell "funky" or as I said, "sewagy". I myself would not drink that crap. I'm not around on a daily basis so I don't clean them out daily. But every time that I do clean them out they smell! They are the "tray" kind, you know the outer ring with a center reservoir per se. I do not use any bleach or soap or such b/c I'm sure that would freak out their owner. I just scrub them down really really good with a rag. It takes some time but I don't mind.

When I asked her how often she's cleaning them she said "almost daily". Hmn...argument brewing. Her logic is that they smell bad because that's what chickens do! I can't win against that. I don't even wanna counter it anymore. Whatever.

But I thought I'd ask some more objective unbiased and unemotionally involved parties. Thanks all!

I was interested in those nipple waterers but she was not. They are not "natural" for a how chickens drink out in the wild. Well, okay.

Do it anyway. It’s also not natural to drink smelly water. A 5 gallon bucket is very cheap and a pkg of nipples at the feed store is very cheap.

 

[dorothydun]

You cannot undo the damage created, but you can, for sure, prevent something worse from happening. Shut down the water immediately so you won't wake up with a flood in your house. Last year, I went through a similar situation, but it was in my summer house, which I don't go to very often, so I wasn't aware of what was happening there until it was too late. Because of some broken apparatus that wasn't appropriately restored, the first floor was completely flooded. I had no background or skills in situations like this, so I started looking for specialists to help me. I looked up water damage restoration San Diego on the Internet and reached out to some excellent experts who could fix the damage.

 

[Trish1947]

To address this, you could look into trying horizontal or vertical nipples. This is a closed system so all the kicking, digging, pooping they do, won't have any impact of the quality of their drinking water.

How long will it take before they understand that the bucket with nipples is the water source? I was concerned they would not drink from it after having a standard water source.

 

[3KillerBs]

How long will it take before they understand that the bucket with nipples is the water source? I was concerned they would not drink from it after having a standard water source.

That depends on the chicken.

The first flock I taught took a couple weeks, but I did it very slowly because it was midsummer with very hot temperatures.

The others learned from the adults who knew how and were drinking from the nipples within a few days or a week.

If you use their beaks to trigger the nipples they might pick it up right away.

 

[Trish1947]

That depends on the chicken.

The first flock I taught took a couple weeks, but I did it very slowly because it was midsummer with very hot temperatures.

The others learned from the adults who knew how and were drinking from the nipples within a few days or a week.

If you use their beaks to trigger the nipples they might pick it up right away.

Thanks. I will give it a try.

 

[Easterly]

If the water smells like sewage, you should clean it more often. I can't understand how some people are able to live near this smell. Last year my apartment had a leak, and it smelled like sewage for 6 weeks straight. I had to contact a water damage repair company. They had to dry the entire apartment, remove the broken pipes and change them. It took around 6 months to fix it. Even after I came back, I felt that disgusting smell for a few more days. I would recommend searching for someone to take a look at your pipes, preferably a specialized person.

 

[OneVision1]

You should regularly monitor the quality of the water, and there should be no odors simultaneously. When I was breeding chickens, I was able to install a system that cleansed and replenished the water itself. However, one day there was a problem with the pipes, and I had to turn to hydro jet drain cleaning irvine service because I already realized that I would not be able to repair such a breakdown. So you have to understand that there should be no smell from the water. Otherwise your chickens can drink bad water and then get sick or die. You need to keep an eye on this, my friend.