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The chickens’ new rocket ship, um, I mean drinker

Posted by on Friday 5 August 2011 in chickens | 3 comments

Earlier this week, the chickens had a new feature installed in their run – a 30litre (6.5gallons) drinker.

It’s a somewhat excessive for six chickens really (they get through about 3-4 litres a day between them) but I’m sick of buying small drinkers and then wishing I’d bought a bigger one (that’s happened twice now), and this one was about the same price as one about half the size so I thought it’s easier to half fill this one than double-fill a smaller one, if you know what I mean ;). Given there is a plan to expand the team slightly next year, and at some point (although probably not imminently) expand into having chickens-for-meat too, I’ll consider this too-big purchase an act of futureproofing.

And it’s not just about future benefits: their feeders hold about four days worth of food and this drinker will easily hold that much water too, even if I only half fill it — I’m not planning on neglecting them by any means, but it’ll lessen the burden on anyone looking after them if we want to go away for a long weekend (the chicken-sitter will only have to check on them and collect eggs). Now, to start planning a weekend away somewhere…! :)

3 Comments

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  1. Jenette

    Love the rocket ship. Just put out a little one if you get chicks.

  2. Rachel

    I’m sure you’ve thought of this, but don’t forget to make sure it’s fully emptied and refilled pretty frequently, especially in summer. I can imagine all sorts of nasties lurking in that volume of luke-warm water.

  3. louisa

    Jenette: yep. If we batch chicks, they’ll be kept separate from the big girls and their big girl drinker for quite some time.

    Rachel: yes, it’ll have less algae growth than the semi-opaque plastic ones we’ve had but there is still plenty of nasty potential — the shop I got it from included cleaning advice (using grit to scrape ick from the sides).

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