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.

It’s a challenge for any chicken owner to look down on the birds knowing eyes and resist the urge to satisfy their every need. We all know that birds will eat most of what is put in front of them – not unlike my brother – but how much is too much?

Cat’s father had often thrown down a little extra corn to his birds without concern – until recently when one of the birds passed. As the results returned from the chicken’s autopsy, it was clear the bird had been overweight. Whilst this was not apparent to the eye, the bird was ‘fat on the inside’ – an insult we regularly throw at our elder brother who, I have to admit, is actually quite streamline.

To overfeed was certainly not their intention yet in their innocence, it had happened. One does not imagine corn can kill but an overdose can be deadly. I hit the net to try and assimilate a solution. ‘Moderation’ was thrown around with the highest frequency – a word weighted heavily with ambiguity. Since there is no chicken treadmill on the market, the best solution I was able to source is to make the birds work for their treats.

Hanging vegetables high in the air is a trick we have tried with our birds. This keeps them occupied and out of trouble for hours. The are also treat balls, usually positioned for cats or rodents, which slowly distribute corm or meal worms as they are knocked or pecked. A pecker block is another recent addition to our enclosure – these can be baked at home to cut down on cost and numerous delicious recipes are available online.

Our birds have certainly experienced a cutback on the calories and are hopefully healthier for it. They may think they have had their revenge by devouring my flower bed but I’m sure they would one day thank me if they could.

Want to hear the chicken’s point of view? Visit my Chicken Talk Blog.

You can also follow my chickens on Twitter.

S has always wanted chickens, which was first randomly announced when we bought our first house together 5 years ago, in an area with restrictions that categorically stated no livestock! Wind on to last year and we got the keys to our new home. We’ve spent the last year bashing the house around and rebuilding it and generally making it our own and now its time for chooks!

Back in March I went to see J the chicken lady (as she is referred to in our house) and met her chickens. I initially decided on two Sussex and two Brahma but then decided that I’d prefer two Welsummer instead of the Brahma (I got worried about their size).  So we can look forward to brown (welsummer) and white (sussex) eggs.

Our chickens weren’t even eggs back in March, but they have since hatched and in a few weeks I’ll be going to collect them! They just need to finish feathering.  Their ride home will be in a… card board box with some newspaper in and air holes?  Will that be OK?!  Forum post coming up…

Since March we have been busy. S has built them their house or the “Palais de Poulet” as it has been nicknamed and he has also built their run. We’ve vermin proofed it as best we can by digging chicken wire into the ground and then stainless steel plate as well, and a net will shortly be put over the top of the run to prevent the wild birds getting in.

I’ve bought a feeder and drinker, food, grit, lice powder, dust extracted shavings, blue egg boxes… the set up for these hens can be pretty expensive if you let yourself get carried away!  In a nod to recycling though, the nest boxes are going to be lined with shredded paper.  My place of employment generates black bags of the stuff almost daily, and I hope it’ll keep them nice and warm and be nice to make nests in.

Then there are the gadgets – pop hole openers, timers, solar lighting systems…  I thought this was quite a low-tech goodlife kinda hobby?  But in all honesty, it does seem to be that it can be as simple or as techy as you want to make it!  My biggest worry / ambition is that the hens we have are happy and healty.

As our chooks are going to be quite young – about 10 weeks old and another 10 weeks (fingers crossed) away from the first very much anticipated egg, we’ve bought growers feed for them.  We’re using a brand that is manufactured in our county of Norfolk and available from a feed merchant who is all of 5 minutes drive from my place of work.  We’ll switch to layers pellet when they get to the appropriate age of 16 weeks.  Is that right?  It’s what it says on the feed sack…  Hmm, another question to the forum…

We should be expecting our first eggs in August /September, and hopefully we’ll continue to get sporadic eggs throughout the winter with our girls hitting their stride next spring!  At least the egg boxes will get some eventual use…

All I’ve got to do now is come up with some names for them…  Any suggestions?!  S has suggested Paxo, Sage, Onion and Roast.  I like Wilma and Wendoline for the Welsummers and Shaz and Sheila for the Sussex.