Susan Skylark
Songster
Anybody have a brilliant way of keeping the bedding dry under the water bottle in an adult, solid floor pen? Much less mess than a bowl but they still manage to drip half of it out rather than drinking it!
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We're a ragtag small scale operation (17 birds and 4 chicks) with 3 pens of quail either on sand or pine shavings, we pretty much do the same thing (toss out the wet shavings/sand) and replace with new. I'd love some sort of 'drainage' area but they'd just poop on it and make an even bigger mess! Thanks!We use verticle nipples on water bottles until they are a couple months old, then they switch over to the horizontal nipples. In the coop it's a 5-gallon bucket that lasts about a month. In growout coops, we used various things like an old, unused Tupperware cereal dispenser.
We use horse bedding pellets in the coop and brooders, and in the brooders, the little ones will dribble a bit, turning the area into sawdust. I just remove that every couple of days and throw a fresh handful of pellets in that spot. The coop has no issue. I guess the ladies know how to get every drop!