Posts Tagged chickens

Well the Great Blizzard of 2011 is behind us, one of the top three storms in the past 50 years.  Hubby was busy for the better part of two days, huddled in layers of warm clothes in the howling wind, out on our 1949 Farmall C tractor with the snow plow blade keeping the drive and the paths to the barns and sheds open. All told, we got somewhere between 12-16 inches of snow, the weatherman can’t quite decide, as the winds were 40-60 mph for two days, which made measuring a bit tough.  The Blizzard is over, but winter is not; it was -14C on the bank in town this morning when I left work for home, and it’s always colder out here in the country. Keeping water to the chickens, turkeys and sheep is a major part of chores here at Blue Feather Hollow in the wintertime, and after 26 years of experience, we’ve discovered sometimes low tech is best!

I’m sure you’ve seen the variety of manufactured and homemade answers to the freezing water problem. Base heaters for metal poultry waterers, base heaters for plastic ones.  Heated waterers.  Heat lamps suspended above the waterers.  Dog bowl heaters, stock tank heaters You name it, we’ve probably tried it!

Some worked.  At least for a while. Others were a waste of money.  A couple of years ago, a new heated waterer came out on the market.  It was all in one, you filled, it plugged it in, and were set to go.  We thought this was a grand idea.  It was bought at great expense and didn’t last long enough for me to even pay the credit card bill.  It was so poorly designed that filling it and getting it in place required THREE arms, ONE of which my poor husband didn’t have.  It fell – a few inches,  mind you, against the edge of the plastic utility sink and shattered.  Now you would think that a plastic waterer hitting the edge of a plastic sink couldn’t shatter.  But you would be wrong – and so were we when we bought that waterer!

We had hoped it would be a better solution than base heaters, which we had quit using.  They never seemed to last much over a year. At $35-40 a pop that seemed a bit costly, not counting the cost of the electricity.   They also drew mice who thought that central heating was a fine thing to have in a mouse nest, requiring bi-weekly evictions of tiny furry tenants from beneath the heater.  The thought of one of them taking a nibble out of one of the wires and our hen house going up in flames was a constant worry, but they found the warmth irresistable, and no mouse trap was enticing enough to lure them from their “Caribbean Vacation Homes”.

The heat light over the waterer worked OK, IF you could get it just the right height above the waterer, IF it wasn’t too cold, and IF we didn’t get the bulb too close to the plastic waterer – yes, those lids will melt, requiring the purchase of a new waterer.  Of course, they also drew a lot of electricity, and our bill reflected that.

In the end, we went back to basics, which we fondly (and not quite so fondly on bitterly cold mornings) call The Bucket Brigade.  We’ve accumulated two of every waterer and bucket we need for the livestock.  There’s a 3 gallon waterer for the layers, a 1 gallon for my mid-life crisis chickens, and buckets for the turkeys and sheep.  We’ve discovered that our turkeys much prefer drinking from a bucket, and so both they and our pair of sheep use them.  The extra waterers were less than the cost of one heater, and we’ll have years more use out of them.

At any given time, one set of buckets and waterers are in the house in the utility sink or on the heated conservatory floor, and the other is out in the barns.  We use the large utility sink to wash them and have an indoor hose to fill them (with frequent supervision by one of our cats), so use of our outdoor frost free hydrant (which always seems to splash water on us) is no longer needed.  Hauling them out by hand over our uneven ground out to the barns presented a different problem – it seemed no matter how careful we were, we always wound up with water splashed down our pant legs or into our boots.  Brrr!

The solution was another low tech device.  A “flying saucer” sled with a rope attached.  Two trips – one out to the sheep barn and hen house with their water and the black rubber bucket we use for egg gathering, and another to the turkeys and Aracaunas with their water and any kitchen scraps for the greedy turkeys and the job is done.  Any splashing takes place in the saucer, and is easily dumped out.  When not in use for chores, it’s fun for the granddaughter!

On most days, we only need take water out in the mornings – everything stays warm long enough that there is still a bit of open water by nightfall when everyone goes to sleep any way.  On very bitter days like we’re having now, we take out water morning and late afternoon to be sure everyone has had enough to drink.

We’ve found several advantages to our low-tech solution.  Since everything comes in the house at least once a day, we’re not tempted to leave a less than sanitary, but still liquid half-full waterer out in the barns. It’s so easy to pop them in the sink and rinse them out in the nice warm house.  When thawed, they are rinsed or washed, refilled and left on the heated floor to warm up before their next trip to the barns.  And no, so far, we’ve not had a single bucket or waterer split, despite sometimes coming in a solid block of ice.

There isn’t as much humidity in the poultry barns, when using base heaters we always noticed how much evaporated into the air of the hen house, and the colder it was, the worse the problem became.  The barn is much drier, which is better for the birds.

Best of all, it has minimized the time we spend on chores in the mornings when we are trying to get ready for work.  We fill the waterers at night, leaving them to warm, so they’re all set to go in the morning.  Most of the work with the water is done where it is warm and dry and we are not bundled in layers of clothing. We save money, stay warmer, and our barns are healthier and safer.  Sometimes the simple solutions, like our Bucket Brigade, really are best.