Gotta Love Those Chicken Nipples......

yup, that's right, chicken nipples.  ha ha, I laugh every time I say it.... "chicken nipples".....  I know what you're thinking, "chickens don't have nipples...do they??" Well, you're right, chickens don't have nipples.  What I am speaking of are ingenious little creations that ingenious farmers use to water their chickens.  My husband spoke of them years ago when we first started raising our own laying hens.  I must admit, I didn't pay much attention, sounded like a lot of work and cost to set up this "chicken nipple watering system".  I didn't jump on the bandwagon so it didn't get put into action.  I had actually forgotten about them until my neighbour showed me her system.  So, when I came home and mentioned it to hubby he got on ebay and found us some chicken nipples.  Oddly enough you can't purchase them at local feed stores.

It is going to be a bit of cost and work to set them up initially but once they are set up they are there for the long haul.  No more lugging gallons of water from the house tap to the barn, just run a hose and fill a barrel.  yay!  And they are so much cleaner for the birds to drink from than the nasty waterers.  

Here is his system before he installed it in the barn.....

For now we are just using a water jug we had kicking around, the barrel set up is yet to come.  The barrel is planned to water all 3 coops.  One barrel to fill, 3 coops watered......

  

We partitioned off the larger area of the barn to keep the chicks closer to the heat lamp, to limit their area to wander when they were very small.  The time has come to open the space up.  They are feathered out more, can handle being away from the heat lamp and could use the extra space to stretch their legs.  I feel they aren't big enough to go into the run yet, that will be in another week or two.  So, that being said, hubby did install the new watering system in their existing area of the barn.  In reality he has probably made more work for himself since we will be removing the partition walls he has used to attach the watering system.  I guess we'll cross that bridge tomorrow.  Today he was anxious to see if they would take to the nipples.  It wasn't long and they were investigating this new addition to their surroundings.  Some were too distracted by the mosquito catching to care, others couldn't take their eyes off those shiny silver watering nipples......

You can see the waterer in the background, it is very dirty after a days worth of scratching and fluttering around.......

Please excuse the mess.....tomorrow they will have more space to roam and fresh bedding.  Of course we freshened their waterer as well, we can't risk them not getting enough water.  

It is hard to believe they will soon be 3 weeks old.  They are not growing off the charts, they are very active and love running around their little space.  When we purchased our meat chicks the first time we asked how long it took for them to grow.  We were told people can grow an 8lb bird in 8 weeks. We cannot seem to do this.  For us it takes 12 weeks.  They have constant access to feed so it's not that, I think it's the fact that they have lots of space to run and get fed garden veggies.  They spend time dust bathing and pecking grass in their large run so they aren't constantly eating the grower.  This year I am going to feed them "finisher" to give them a bit more fat.  Last year our birds were very lean, which in one way is great but it's nice to have some fat for flavour and probably would make them more tender. 

 

'til next time!