New Water System

The following post is written by EBet.  I, Lanny, am pleased to say that EBet from Paddle in the Pond will also be posting here.  She writes and posts about the sky and the wildlife around our ponds over at her blog, take some time to check it out if you haven’t been there yet.

We were looking into a new watering system here at Vicktory Farm and Gardens for all of our poultry.  Something that would keep the water cleaner, allow the addition of vitamins and occasional coccidiosis medicine, and in the winter to decrease the freezing problem.  We happened upon water nipples and wondered about them.  Some of our friends are in the chicken business big time and encouraged our change over to nipples, stating that nipples are now the industry standard. 

So I ordered the nipples and purchased small buckets very similar to a regular five gallon bucket, and began to make our new watering system.

 Here I am drilling a 11/32 hole in the bottom of a 2 gallon bucket.

Here is the water nipple, first I put the black gasket in the hole then I put in the nipple.

And wah-la

Thirty full grown chickens can drink off of one three nipple bucket.

Ducks too!   I was amazed at how fast they learned to drink off of it, even after they learned to drink out of the normal waterer.  I am also very excited about this system with the meat ducks as they can be incredibly messy with normal waterers or poultry water fountains, not only fouling their drinking water but soaking their bedding as well.

Now that I have all the young and newly hatched poultry on the nipple system I will be working toward switching the adult birds to the same.