Drinking bowl for chickens — instructions on how to make with your own hands. 85 photos of the implementation of simple ideas
Agriculture currently attracts a lot of enthusiasts. The prospect of eating eco-friendly food is tempting, and a personal farmstead can serve as a good way to earn money. Home products are well in demand and have an advantage over store products.
However, the organization of your own poultry yard or farm requires reflection, calculation of forces and some material investments. In the arrangement of a chicken coop or any other room for keeping birds, it is necessary to provide, in addition to feed, access to fresh water. Without its sufficient volume, food is poorly absorbed, and metabolic products are worse excreted from the body. Most of all, young individuals need water.
To meet the needs of birds in liquid, various drinkers are used, which can be built with their own hands. You can see the designs and features in more detail and clearly in the photo of the drinking bowls for chickens.
The average daily measure of liquid required for one bird is 0.5 liters. But the volume may vary, depending on the temperature regime and the amount of feed consumed. It is not difficult to make a drinking bowl from improvised materials, or spending small funds to supplement the system.
Every owner of a suburban plot dreams of making it unique and inimitable, filling it with original ideas, investing their dreams, knowledge and their talents. A lot of crafts can be made for the garden from unnecessary material, for example from ordinary driftwood. My husband is fond of snags, he constantly carves something out of them, mostly vases or figurines, we have his snags everywhere in the house, like these, for example.
Before making a drinking bowl, the following points should be taken into account:
Reliability. An important requirement is to make a stable structure so that the chickens do not overturn it. Otherwise, the birds will lose water, and dampness will appear in the poultry house. And excessive humidity carries a risk for the disease, especially young animals.
Practicality. For ease of use, it is worth providing an easy option to change the water. Optimal — connection to the water supply or other automatic filling plan.
Safety. When constructing drinkers, it is better to give preference to plastic materials than metal ones. This is due to a change in the characteristics of medicinal substances when interacting with metal particles, in the event that chickens will be given some medications.
Also, in order to avoid injuring animals with sharp edges and protrusions of drinkers, it is necessary to treat the sides well.
Water quality. In order to preserve clean drinking water, it matters how isolated it is from external factors: contamination with chicken droppings, other garbage. Therefore, the advantage in closed drinkers is obvious.
It is also worth considering a way to heat water in the cold season, for example, to install heating elements under the tanks.
Cup drinkers
A simplified version, which is a bowl or bowl. They are placed at a level accessible to birds. The drinker requires frequent water changes and can easily turn over. Suitable only for temporary use.
An improved open—view model is a drinking bowl made of a sewer pipe with a diameter of 10-15 cm. With a grinder or other convenient tool, rectangular holes of 25-30 cm are made in the pipe so that the initial and final ones are 10-20 cm away from the edge.
The distance between the holes should be from 10 to 20 cm, respectively. The edges are being cleaned. Put plugs on the edges. When pouring or draining, the necessary plugs are eliminated.
In the chicken coop, the structure is fixed with clamps suitable in diameter with the pipe, and the pipe itself is fixed 15-20 cm above the floor level at a slope of 1-2 degrees. This will make it possible to flush the pipe, and the drain will be carried out by gravity.
Such plastic drinkers are stable, they can be connected to a water supply system or a tank. But the water in the structure will quickly lose its freshness, and the drinking bowl itself is suitable only for adults.
Nipple drinkers
A popular model among poultry farmers, due to the fact that the water in the nipple drinkers can be kept fresh for a long time due to its design. Suitable for birds of any age.
To construct a drinking bowl, you need 1800 nipples (for chickens) and 3600 (for adults), drop traps, PVC pipe, a tank for standing water. After the marking is done, holes are drilled for each nipple separately, as well as a drop catcher. The latter can be made independently from plastic bottles, or purchased in a store. The distance between the nipples should be about 30 cm.
Then they thread and screw in the nipples wrapped with fum tape. A plug is placed at the end of the pipe on one side, on the other it is attached to the tank at a distance of 5-10 cm.
There is a lightweight version of the nipple drinker, which looks like this: take a container with a volume of 10-30 liters and nipples in the amount of 4-5 pieces. Holes are drilled in the bottom, and nipples are screwed in. The container is hung at an optimal height for birds. This nipple drinker allows you to use water economically, is reliable and easy to keep clean.
Vacuum drinkers
In this type of model, you will have to monitor the condition of the water and change it more often than in the nipple. For the device, you need to take any container, it can be an ordinary 1-1.5 liter jar, fill it with clean water to the brim, cover with a saucer and turn it over.
You can also put special bars on a saucer, lid or a special stand. The principle of operation of this design is due to the pressure that does not allow water to pour out.
You can also use a plastic bucket with a lid as a drinker, you also need a pallet that is larger than a bucket in area. Holes are drilled in the lid, a bucket is filled with fresh water and tipped upside down on a pallet. In the course of use, the pallet is systematically filled with water. Drinking bowls for chickens are most often made of a vacuum type.
Other variations of drinkers
Basically, drip drinkers are used to provide water to young animals: nipple or vacuum. The main condition is to prevent accidents so that chickens cannot drown or drown in a deep vessel.
Drinkers are securely fixed to avoid the risk of overturning, because, as they grow up, the chickens become more active and the risk of overturning increases.
Hosepipe Drinker
A simple version of the drinker can be made using a garden hose. Part of the hose is bent in the form of a drop and one edge is attached to the water supply system, and the other is hung at a comfortable height for chickens.
This device is suitable for a single application per day, for example, in the morning, because the water consumption is very noticeable.
Plastic bottle drinkers
In the manufacture of drinkers, you can resort to elementary materials that are at hand. So you can make drinkers from plastic bottles. They are not as stable as glass vacuum ones, but their privilege is safe for birds.
Execution scheme: take bottles of 5 liters and 2.5 liters. First, the 5-liter cut off ¾ of the part, leaving only ¼ for further device. In the 2.5-liter one, holes are made at a distance of 7-8 cm from the neck and inserted into the 5-liter one. They take the lids from both bottles and put the smaller one into the larger one, fixing it with screws. Then the container is filled with water and twisted.
Drinkers from cooler bottles
Another way is to take 2 cooler bottles and 2 plastic buckets in which they could fit. And, taking into account the level of filling with water, make holes so that the chickens can then freely push their heads through. The dispenser is made from parts of the pipe.
The neck of the bottles is inserted into the pipe, a zigzag edge is performed, all the details are compared, filling with clean water. The container itself is turned over in the bucket, and the water thereby fills it. The volume of liquid in such a drinking bowl makes it possible to quench the thirst of a considerable number of birds for a long time.
Heated drinking bowlIn winter, it is important to build a heated drinking bowl.
To do this, a wooden base is made, inside which a lamp is placed. The heating is due to the heat given off by the device and the water is not subjected to freezing.
The device of drinking systems is different. These can be simple or original drinkers, improved and convenient for a particular chicken coop.
An example of an original and design method of execution can be a drinking bowl like a burdock leaf. To do this, a burdock is laid out on a small pile of sand. Then the pre—mixed concrete is poured over it so that the layer is denser in the center and thin at the edges of the sheet.
After the concrete dries, the burdock leaf is carefully removed. The resulting concrete bowl has a pattern of burdock veins, which can additionally be painted in any color. Such a drinker will bring originality and embellish the landscape.
Photo of a drinking bowl for chickens
