Water Problem!!!

[cnicho05]

Hello,

I've finally decided it's time to find a better way to supply water to my chickens. First the first few years I used a traditional 1/2 gallon waterer which sat on the ground. This was horrible...as I had to fill it daily and as soon as I put clean water into the thing my chickens would kick grass or dirt into the thing. Next...after getting the idea here...I tried hanging the waterer. That didn't work either as they kept spilling the water out after just a few minutes.

After all of this I finally got water-nipples to try. These worked much better but I noticed my chickens were always super thirsty and that egg production dropped. Because of this I used both the nipples and the waterer for the last six months. Yesterday I was pulling everything out to clean and I noticed the nipples had failed and my chickens couldn't get water from them.

What can I do that will provide a LOT of CLEAN water to my chickens. I don't want to have to fill their water daily but don't want it dirty after a few minutes either. Any ideas?

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

How was your hanging waterer hung? How were they spilling the water out? What sort of nipples were you using and in what sort of setup (bucket, pipe, etc)? Have you identified the cause of the "failure" - how many nipples was it that all failed? It is likely a simple change or two would easily make the waterer more effective and yield the results your looking for.

 

[cnicho05]

Hello,

The waterer was hung using a solid clasp which would not allow the waterer to swing like with a string. It still had some ability to move as the handle could move from side-to-side. As for the nipples, I had four attached to the bottom of a six gallon tank and five attached to a piece of pvc pipe on the opposite end of the enclosure. The image below was the type of nipples I used and the problem occurred with the top mettle pen became stuck on eight of the nine I was using.

I just feel like this takes the majority of time when working with my chickens. I would love to cut down on this time as I would like to focus on improving their enclosure more.