A couple of weeks ago a post from Daily Yonder came up on my RSS feed about chicken waterers. It promised a way to water chickens without them wallowing in their own filth. Chickens will shit on anything, including the open water lip of their water container — which has always grossed me out. Plus, you waste a lot of water dumping out the dirty stuff for them and then they just make it all dirty again.

The Daily Yonder article was about a couple, Mark Hamilton and Anna Hess who came up with a way to economically and hygenically water their chickens, as well as make some off-farm money by selling the kits. The product is called the Avian Aqua Miser Chicken Waterer. I ordered a kit, which consisted of the little red nipple device you can see on the bottom of the Clorox bottle, and a drill bit of the correct size (plus directions, a piece of wire for a hanger, and an instructional DVD). You can get just the nipple for $15 or for $20 they put the drill bit in there to save you a trip to the store (unless you’re my Sweetheart, the contractor, who has every drill bit in the universe, but I didn’t feel like making a trip to his house either).

This took two seconds to put together. I drilled a hole in the bottom of the bottle, screwed in the red nipple, drilled a couple of tiny holes at the top so there’s no vaccuum, filled the bottle, and hung it using the coathook I already had on the outside of the coop. The chickens figured it out right away (my iPhone couldn’t catch this one pecking at it for water, but she did just seconds after this snapped, and just seconds before).

And there’s no more disgusting poopy water in the chicken coop! And, I got to repurpose one of the Clorox bottles I’ve been accumulating (I know, I know, bleach isn’t good for the environment, but I love bleach.)I’m going to have to figure out something for winter, but Anna and Mark’s site has a bunch of DIY suggestions for heaters, and I figure I’ll just go to the ranch store and see what they have.