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Your cart is empty.Tom Flatt
Reviewed in Canada on March 11, 2025
With a new brood of chickens getting ready to hatch in the incubator, my daughter asked if I could work out an easy solution to her watering problem. She normally keeps only a few hens for their eggs and, whenever she has chicks, she worries continually about the large bowl of water that she regularly fills for her hens. Agreeing that it wouldn’t do to have the chicks get soaking wet or drown, I decided to try out these clever little waterers.While the waterers are designed to be attached to a water supply via half inch PVC pipe, given the small size of both the coop and the flock, my daughter and I opted for a simpler installation, attaching the plastic cups directly to a tall squared off plastic storage container with a lid which can sit on the floor in the coop. Being rectangular in shape, we put two cups (equally spaced out) on each of the long sides and one on each of the short sides. Installation was simple and involved drilling a hole for each cup in the side of the container (3/8” if I remember correctly), placing a washer over threads against the wall of the container, wrapping the thread in plumber’s tape (which is included) and hand tightening the butterfly nuts on the threads. We didn’t experience any significant leaks.The units worked exactly as advertised, filling with water to the brim before the water supply to the cup turned off automatically. I prefer using the “bucket method” to using PVC pipe since it is much quicker and less fiddly to set up and, for us at least, seems to largely eliminates the problem of the birds standing on the cup and causing it turn sideways out of alignment. If there’s a flaw with the product it lies in the lifespan of the units which aren’t particularly robust in construction. The constant use these units receive combined with the fact that they’re outside and exposed to the elements, leads me to expect that the individual cups probably have a maximum lifespan of a few years.This really is a great, economical way of feeding chickens, the space required is quite minimal and you don’t need to worry about cold, soggy birds. The fact that the individual cups may require occasional replacement due to usage and/or exposure to the elements is something that, living in the country, we accept as a routine occurrence. With only a few birds, it really doesn’t make sense to invest in anything more sophisticated. Recommended.
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