I am SO enjoying my first experience raising chickens. I had no idea how much fun they would be. I have 12 layers (6 BO, 4 Production reds, and 2 Australorps), and 12 cornish cross broilers. My broilers go through a ton of water. I usually have to fill the waterer twice a day. Since I am ever on a quest to simplify my life (don't ask me why I have 8 horses, 6 dogs, 4 cats, 2 bunnies, and 24 chickens, and am looking for a couple of goats if I'm trying to SIMPLIFY my life...) without compromising the health of my animals, I stumbled on a coop thread that had pictures closed system chicken waterers... No poop in the water!!! Reservoir to hold more than a couple of hours worth of water!!! Yeah!!! I'm all over that!!!
First, I had to find chicken nipples. I love saying that... "Chicken nipples"... I also had great fun going to the feed store and asking the owner if he had any chicken nipples... "Nooooo...." giving me a weird look... Me: "Why not??" innocently... "Chickens... don't... have... nipples..." looking at me as if I had just stepped off of the short bus... Me, barely containing my hysterical laughter... "No!! Chicken nipples... For building a watering system for my chickens..." Hee, hee, hee, heeeeee.....
I found them in a Farm Tek catalog, but they wanted $13 in shipping for $12 worth of nipples!! I found a nice company right here in MN that shipped them to me for free, so nipples in hand, I headed to my local fleet store where I bought my chicks from for the rest of the supplies. A nice young man helped me make sense of all the different tubings and fittings and I purchased what I hoped would be the stuff to make my waterer. Several more trips later, I finally had all of the fittings and piping I needed...
My husband passed away 2 years ago, and my brother-in-law (his brother) has been helping me out with all of the projects I have to do around my little farm. I appreciate him more than I can say, but sometimes, I just want to do things myself, and this was one of those projects. As soon as I mentioned it to him, he started telling me how he could build this and that... So after that, I kept quiet and did it in "stealth mode"...
I assembled the watering tubes and nipples in the back room at work one afternoon...
Close up of the connection between the flexible tubing and the tubing with the nipples installed...
A closer look at the nipples installed in the tube.... I have 2 coops, a layer coop and a meaty coop, so I built 2 of them, each about 3 feet long with 4 nipples in each one...
Then I had to build a stand to put in between my coops to put an old cooler on for the reservoir... I found all of the materials in a pile left over from the construction of my barn last year...
Here is the cooler on the stand. This is NOT where it will be, but there was a big storm rolling in and my drill had died, so I couldn't get the hose into the layer coop. I just wanted to see if everything was functional, so I set it up to run into the meaty coop temporarily...
They were pretty leary of it at first, but then...
Chicken waterer success!!!!!!!!!!
Hopefully I can get it hooked up in the layer coop this evening adn they will learn as quickly as these guys did!!!
First, I had to find chicken nipples. I love saying that... "Chicken nipples"... I also had great fun going to the feed store and asking the owner if he had any chicken nipples... "Nooooo...." giving me a weird look... Me: "Why not??" innocently... "Chickens... don't... have... nipples..." looking at me as if I had just stepped off of the short bus... Me, barely containing my hysterical laughter... "No!! Chicken nipples... For building a watering system for my chickens..." Hee, hee, hee, heeeeee.....
I found them in a Farm Tek catalog, but they wanted $13 in shipping for $12 worth of nipples!! I found a nice company right here in MN that shipped them to me for free, so nipples in hand, I headed to my local fleet store where I bought my chicks from for the rest of the supplies. A nice young man helped me make sense of all the different tubings and fittings and I purchased what I hoped would be the stuff to make my waterer. Several more trips later, I finally had all of the fittings and piping I needed...
My husband passed away 2 years ago, and my brother-in-law (his brother) has been helping me out with all of the projects I have to do around my little farm. I appreciate him more than I can say, but sometimes, I just want to do things myself, and this was one of those projects. As soon as I mentioned it to him, he started telling me how he could build this and that... So after that, I kept quiet and did it in "stealth mode"...
I assembled the watering tubes and nipples in the back room at work one afternoon...
Close up of the connection between the flexible tubing and the tubing with the nipples installed...
A closer look at the nipples installed in the tube.... I have 2 coops, a layer coop and a meaty coop, so I built 2 of them, each about 3 feet long with 4 nipples in each one...
Then I had to build a stand to put in between my coops to put an old cooler on for the reservoir... I found all of the materials in a pile left over from the construction of my barn last year...
Here is the cooler on the stand. This is NOT where it will be, but there was a big storm rolling in and my drill had died, so I couldn't get the hose into the layer coop. I just wanted to see if everything was functional, so I set it up to run into the meaty coop temporarily...
They were pretty leary of it at first, but then...
Chicken waterer success!!!!!!!!!!
Hopefully I can get it hooked up in the layer coop this evening adn they will learn as quickly as these guys did!!!
