I like the simplicity of many of our customers' chick brooder setups.  Clearly, our homemade chicken waterers fit into the systems easily, keeping the brooders dry while using up very little space.  Here's what Nicki from Wisconsin had to say about her homemade waterer (pictured above):

It took about five seconds for the chicks to figure out what they were doing with the nipple.  We tied the bottle to a chair leg and hung it over the box. We nearly had a stampede to get to it and play in the water!
 
We still have a water bottle waterer for the chicken walker/cage that we push around the yard for them.  We have a dog that "Plays" with them to death hence the need for the chicken walker.

Thanks so much for your great product!  Enjoy the pictures.

The image to the right shows Jamie David's half-grown chicks, upgraded to a bucket waterer.  Meanwhile, lest you think that only chickens can take to our waterer, two of our customers sent in photos of other types of poultry in action.  The image on the left below shows two day old ducklings and guinea keets drinking from Diane Watson's waterer.  She emailed that the waterer is made "using a 4" pvc pipe cap as the reservoir.  It holds a quart of water, easily refills from the top, and does not take up valuable brooder floor space."  On the right, you see Barbara's two week old chicks and guinea keets drinking from her own homemade chick waterer.

If you're looking for a quick, easy, and effective waterer for your brooder, the best way to start is with one of our DIY chicken waterer kits.

Hello Anna,

We LOVE IT!!!!

We have 13 girls and 2 tough boys! We did as you said and didn't leave water for them. We got our 5 gallon bucket and added the nipples and voila. It took one chicken who is our busy body, she kept looking and looking and then a peck and more and more! It was a total of 5 minutes before all were taking part. The boys were the last to subject themselves!!! Yeah, Thank you now we can go on vacation and not worry.

We are blessed, and will be praying that your business will be also!

Randy and Kelley and our 15 chickens!!

* * *

(Just a heads up...)

LOVE IT!  I have it setup in my brooder, I absolutely love it .... Works awesome!

Thank you!

--- Rob from Oregon

Ed from Texas emailed to let me know that he'd put together a video of his chickens drinking from his brand new bucket waterer.  He also mentioned that his birds had been a bit afraid of the waterer at first, even though he tempted them closer with cheerios, spinach, and finally a plate of water underneath.  He wrote:

Last year, we had several people return their waterers claiming that their chickens couldn't figure out how to drink.  This year, though, people seem to trust us more, and are willing to give the waterer a second shot even if their chickens are more recalcitrant than the average bird (who usually picks the new watering method up in less than an hour.)

Thanks for giving it another go, Ed!  Your chickens will thank you too --- but you have clearly figured that out already, since you already ordered another homemade chicken waterer kit.

Jamie from Alaska sent me a photo of his new bucket waterer in action.  He wrote:

Meanwhile, Louisa pulled out a stopwatch, then emailed to say:

David wrote in too:

Thanks for reporting in, everybody!  If you haven't taken the plunge yet, our homemade chicken waterer kits are extremely affordable, and --- as David says --- your chickens will love them even more than you do.

In the past, I've used pre-made Avian Aqua Misers for all of our chickens.  The small size is very handy in our equally small tractors, adding so little weight that they don't impact my ability to pull the tractors to a new patch of ground.

But with 17 cockerels left, plus our growing chick and its Mama hen, watering the forest pasture was becoming a chore.  When we decided to go out of town for a long weekend, I begged Mark to make me a bucket waterer to hydrate the flock.

I was surprised to discover that our chickens adored their new bucket waterer and started ignoring the smaller waterers.  My best guess is that the large mass of water in the five gallon bucket stays much cooler, which is quite a treat given recent hot temperatures.  The experience has solidified my belief that bucket waterers are the way to go in large coop and run situations where weight isn't an issue.

Greg Whitmore from The Round Rock Funny Farm turned one of our homemade chicken waterer kits into an elegant, self-filling bucket waterer.  I've included one of his photos here, but you should definitely go check out his blog post, which lists the specific hardware he used to create his waterer.

Meanwhile, we got this cheerful email from another customer:

Thanks for your kind words, April, and for your ingenuity, Greg!  You both made our day!

"I got started a year and a half ago with a stray quail, and it got out of hand from there," Steve Blair explained when I asked him about his quail hatchery business.  Clover Quail Farm, located outside Clover, South Carolina, sells quail eggs for eating and for hatching, as well as day old chicks.

Steve emailed me the photo at the top of the page, showing his two day old quail chicks drinking out of one of our homemade chicken waterers.  He was very self-affacing when I asked him if I could post about his business on this blog.  "Sure I would appreciate any promotional exposure," he wrote, "However I am just a small backyard farm."

Those of you who love your poultry and are looking for a way to get your significant other off your back about feed costs might consider trying out Steve's business model.  A breeding pair of an interesting chicken variety combined with a broody hen may be all you need to bring in a little extra "egg money."

You have another happy customer here!  I just started raising chickens last November and fortunately I found out about your product before I had my first chicks.  I knew a good product when I saw it and never had to deal with filthy water.  I am also glad to be helping out creative, hard-working entrepreneurs like you. 











I used my 3-pack DIY kit to make one coop waterer and one 5 gallon bucket waterer for the yard, since my flock free-ranges during the day.  I don't have to teach the chickens what to do.  One figures it out and the rest copy her.










The coop waterer is made of a one gallon bottled water jug.  I painted it blue to keep out the sun, leaving a clear level-viewing strip.  I floated an orange nerf ball inside to make it easier to see the water level.

The bucket waterer is made from an old pool chlorine bucket.  It has two nipples and is painted for aesthetics.  I bought a plant bracket and used sturdy bolts to mount it on a 2x2 post.  Now I don't have to worry about their water supply in the hot desert summers.

Thanks for a great product!

Last fall, Titus Blackwood emailed me to ask if our Avian Aqua Miser will work with day old chicks.  "Well, I'm not sure," I replied.  "But if you give it a shot, can you take some photos and let me know?"

It turns out that our automatic chicken waterers not only work with day old chicks, they are vastly preferable to old-fashioned waterers.  Titus raised over 150 laying hens on the Avian Aqua Miser, and reports that she ended up with healthier birds than ever before.  She was so pleased with the results that she changed all of her birds over to nipple-based waterers.

"It's easier to teach a day old chick than an older bird," Titus reports.  "And we've had significantly fewer pecking problems since using the Avian Aqua Miser."

Many thanks to Kristin Mahony from Ranch Alacrity and co-owner of Rocky Mountain Reindeer for taking the photos.  And of course, a big thank you to Titus who has since become an online buddy!

Remember Jon Miller's chicken waterer setup that uses a toilet float to stay full?  Jon sent me some lovely followup photos of his homemade waterer in action. 

This lady seems to be having a few issues figuring out how to drink, but she clearly got it eventually, as you can see in the photo below:

Thanks for sharing, Jon!  You've got some lovely, happy hens!

Interested in making your own innovative chicken waterer?  Check out our diy chicken waterer kits starting from $15.

Congratulations to Ross Johnston, the winner of our Groundhog's Day chicken waterer giveaway!  His chicken bucket waterer is simple and seems to be working perfectly in his homemade coop.





Thanks you to everyone who entered our contest!  I've got some more photos that I'll be posting over the next week or two, and I'd love to see your photos even though the contest is over.  Just email them to at anna@kitenet.net.  Happy spring!

We'll return to our regularly scheduled chicken tractor construction info later in the week, but I got an email from a customer that I wanted to share.  Jon Miller contacted me a few weeks ago to ask if he could put our chicken nipples directly into a water hose and leave it turned on so that he'd never have to refill his chickens' water.  I told him that our nipples are meant to be used on gravity pressure only, but Jon wasn't deterred.  He emailed me again last weekend to say:

Thanks for sharing, Jon!  I love your solution, and I'm sure your chickens do too.

Thanks for the kind words, Barbara!  We're always thrilled to hear that the Avian Aqua Miser works on birds other than chickens.  (So far, we've heard good things about using them with turkeys as well.)  And it always makes my day to hear that our automatic chicken waterer makes other people's lives as easy as it has made mine.

Marvin Bartel wrote in this week to share his ingenious solution to the problem of frozen chicken waterers.  His description and photos were so great, I've reproduced the entire email here with just a few modifications:

Here in Northern Indiana it gets cold. I have a three hens  in a small insulated shed.  They use one of your drinkers.  So far this year it has been down to  7 degrees F outside and down to 15 F in the shed.

Being a potter and expecting cold weather, I made a stoneware pot shown here under the drinker bucket.  It contains a 25 watt lightbulb controlled by a thermostat.  The water bucket has  wire and spring to secure it so it cannot fall off.

The yellow plug thermostat is designed to turn on heat tape to keep pipes from freezing.  It is permanently set to switch on at 38 and off at 50.  Search for: Easy Heat #EH-38 Auto Thermostat.  Amazon has them at $12.88 + shipping.

This is the base with the stoneware cover removed.  Inside the closed container it reached 50 degrees too soon and turned the bulb off before it produced enough heat  to keep the drinker from freezing.  By adding an inch of insulation between the bulb and the thermostat, the bulb stays on long enough to keep the drinker from freezing (thus far). The insulation is alumina-silica fiber insulation used in pottery kilns and space shuttles. Other fireproof insulation would probably work. The bulb uses a standard porcelain fixture.

The closed warmer without the water container on top of it.  Any potter can make these.  A tinsmith could also make it from sheet metal.

The drinker is mounted with a rubber o-ring seal. Inside the water pail it has a brass nut (sold to fit the little pipe under a lamp sockets).

We're always thrilled to see unique homemade chicken waterers like this one.  Marvin's base is very elegant because he's a potter, but I suspect less crafty folks could make something equally utilitarian with even less effort.  Or contact Marvin and commission him to make you a unique art base!

I always enjoy getting photos from our customers, especially the ones who use some ingenuity when putting together their homemade chicken waterers.  Ruth H. emailed me a couple of weeks ago with her method of keeping her bucket waterer poop-free without making it hard to fill:

I know from experience that the plastic lids they make for five gallon buckets can be a serious pain to take off and put back on, so I think Ruth's use of plumbing pieces has real potential.  Thanks for sharing, Ruth!

Bucket waterers are very popular for chicken keepers with more than a dozen birds.  When you buy one of our diy chicken waterer kits, it's simple and cheap to install chicken nipples in the bottom of a scavenged (or bought) five gallon bucket.

But how do you support a heavy bucket of water on the side of your coop?  Mark made a cheap and easy bucket waterer support out of a two by two, some screws, and a couple of shelf brackets.  The finished support now graces the walls of my father's chicken coop in South Carolina.  Thanks for being our guinea pig, Daddy!

Alexandra Kent had an equally clever solution in her winning photo from our 2009 photo contest.

Congratulations to our photo contest winners! Our grand prize winner's photo was not only well designed, it also showcased a unique way to hang a bucket waterer that we'd never thought of. Alexandra will receive three free automatic chicken waterers for her talented photo.

Didn't have time to take award-winning photos in time for this year's contest? Don't despair, we'll run another photo contest in fall 2010. Subscribe to our blog for up to date information.





Runner up: