Yee ha - Winter is here! Question about water

[Alaskan]

FWIW, in general, hot water freezes faster than cold water. There are innumerable links explaining it on Google. Here's a couple: https://www.livescience.com/32128-does-hot-water-freeze-faster-than-cold-water.html
https://medium.com/the-physics-arxi...ysicists-solve-the-mpemba-effect-d8a2f611e853

From what I understand though... you have to have lab conditions to create that.

And... bringing out really hot water helps to warm up the container, and it also melts any ice in the container, so you end up with a warm container and more water.... which takes longer to freeze than a cold container, with cold water and ice chunks.

 

[Mrs. K]

mine will eat the ice chips, after I stomp out the black bowl! Even though I am standing there pouring warm water in the bowl, they love to chew on the ice.

I do two black bowls. Fill one, it will freeze solid if cold enough, next morning, flip upside down in the sun. Fill the second bowl. The black will gather enough heat that the ice will fall out, easier than kicking and stomping it out, most days. Other days, I stomp or drop on the corner of a cement block.

I take it down in a gallon milk jug. Easy to carry without spilling on me going down.

Mrs K

 

[Chickassan]

I fill jugs at night and leave them by the backdoor so they are room temperature it is plenty warm enough to melt surface ice and the chickens seem to like it.
Side note iv'e never in my life heard a person yee haw winter.
That just isn't natural.

 

[aesch]

I fill a five gallon bucket of water and drop in an aquarium heater plugged to an extension cord from the garage. It comes in at night and topped off or cleaned out as needed

 

[Duckfarmer1]

FWIW, in general, hot water freezes faster than cold water. There are innumerable links explaining it on Google. Here's a couple: https://www.livescience.com/32128-does-hot-water-freeze-faster-than-cold-water.html
https://medium.com/the-physics-arxi...ysicists-solve-the-mpemba-effect-d8a2f611e853

Don’t mean to interrupt but I told everyone in a thread awhile ago about filling regular salt in water bottles...float ghost in your duck water tubs,,,salt Walt slows down process and for reason this being in there works,....for small animals I use pinpoint balls of golf balls..they prevent it freezing by moving around the water

 

[NHMountainMan]

From what I understand though... you have to have lab conditions to create that.

And... bringing out really hot water helps to warm up the container, and it also melts any ice in the container, so you end up with a warm container and more water.... which takes longer to freeze than a cold container, with cold water and ice chunks.

I’m definitely going to test this- identical galvanized cans, each with a measured gallon- see which the chickens prefer and which freezes first- I’ll report back.

 

[NHMountainMan]

I fill jugs at night and leave them by the backdoor so they are room temperature it is plenty warm enough to melt surface ice and the chickens seem to like it.
Side note iv'e never in my life heard a person yee haw winter.
That just isn't natural.

Am I not allowed to say YeeHaw because I’m a Yankee?? It was it the winter love in general. If I could convince my wife we’d be way up north in Alaska. I hate heat and humidity.. I took the Mrs to Alaska a few years back hoping to convince her to move. She thought Alaska was just NH on steroids. But at least she agree to retire here rather than move south!

 

[50-45-1]

lots of good info about water here.
i dont have electric in my coop so in Winter, i take out warm water in the mornings and bring the waterer in at night so it does not freeze..
my husband who built the coop offered to run electric out, but i just did not think my chickens needed it.
now i kind of think it would have been a handy thing to have.
I like winter too, i enjoy all 4 seasons even though some folks say there are only 2 seasons in Michigan....Winter and July....
welcome to the Backyard!

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

Am I not allowed to say YeeHaw because I’m a Yankee?? It was it the winter love in general. If I could convince my wife we’d be way up north in Alaska. I hate heat and humidity.. I took the Mrs to Alaska a few years back hoping to convince her to move. She thought Alaska was just NH on steroids. But at least she agree to retire here rather than move south!

I'm right there with you on the YeeHaw @NHMountainMan. I fill my chicken waterer with hot water when the temps are below 30F. I only did this once yesterday and even though the ambient temperatures were 30F all day, their water never froze. This morning it was down to 18F and I gave them hot water when I turned on the lights in the coop. I went out there 2 hours later to do the daily coop cleaning and carried another hot waterer with me. The first one didn't even have frost in it. One thing I would recommend is to move your waterer to the run outside of the coop. Excess moisture inside the coop can lead to frostbite. That's why it's important to keep adequate ventilation to keep moisture levels down and to minimize urine fumes.

 

[aart]

FWIW, in general, hot water freezes faster than cold water. There are innumerable links explaining it on Google.

Yup.

It might be interesting to do an experiment and see how much longer hot water takes to freeze.

Have done it. 2 identical containers of water, one filled with hot, one filled with cold and placed side by side in the coop on a frigid winter day. Hot one started freezing up first.

Anyway, I have a waterer heated with an aquarium heater...stays at about 70°F.
I top it off with about a half a gallon daily and use warm water so as not to belabor the heater unnecessarily.