During the winter season the temperature will gradually drop down below 00 which means that for poultry it will give a great impact and causing several problems such as the reduction of egg production, freezing water that caused lowering water intake, fertility reduction and so forth. If you have or raising chickens than you have to take a very good care on your chicken especially their water supply. The water became easily to froze during winter particularly during the worst days.
Meanwhile if you have chicken, they should drink enough water to keep them healthy and alive. Even non freezing water if its temperature cold enough for the chicken than it will not be recommend to give those kind of water to chickens. The chickens usually consume less water during this season but a clean and fresh water still be needed to keep their organs and metabolism functioning.
Keeping the water supply edible for the chicken maybe tricky sometimes since we have to keep temperature at a certain poin. But there is easy ways to keep your chickens water from freezing in winter and we will discussed it in this article.
Easy Ways to Keep Your Chicken’s Water from Freezing in Winter
There are two easy ways to keep your chicken’s water from freezing in winter basically by using electricity or non electricity. The goal of both ways is to keep your chicken and water still warm enough during winter season. These following trick could be easy for you who start on creating poultry farm:
1. Adding a hot water
The easiest way to prevent your chickens water from freezing in winter is by adding a hot water within a certain period of time. During winter time the main focus is keeping the water to a normal temperature.
But in contrary if you have a lot of thing to be done at the same times this method will give you a little trouble. Since you must check the water temperature in certain period time.
2. Use a big or wide water tub
The bigger and wider the waterer will slowing the water to get freeze. But it may be risky if you have a younger chickens since they will be easily fall into the waterer. So you must be more carefull to use a big water tub, prevent them from falling might be difficult. You must be very carefull to take care of newborn chickens.
3. Use rubber or plastic instead of metal or steel
Rubber or plastic made tub or waterer will be more effective to be used during the winter season since the material will less effective in conducts cold. The rubber or plastic material is cheap compare to the metal or steel waterer. The water will take longer time to turn into a solid ice if you use this material.
4. Floating ball
A floating ball will do a favor to keep the chicken’s water from freezing. You can use a regular plastic ball for your children to play or people usually use a ping pong balls. Take bunch of them and put it on your waterer.
Basically this idea relies on the function of wind or breeze that move the ball arround the water’s surface and create waves. This waves will prevent the ice layer forming on top of the chicken’s water.
5. A bottle of water and salt
Put a water and salt into a bottle, you can use either mineral water bottle or any kind of bottle that large enough (20 oz). Made a highly concentrated salt water and put it into your waterer. The idea is that the salt water freeze poin temperature will below the water so it absorb from surrounding water and it will freeze first and keep the water surround it to be freezes.
6. Use dark coloured material of waterer
If you dont want to use any electricity to keep your chicken’s water from freezing in winter you can optimize the natural energy such as the sun rays. by using dark coloured waterer it will absorb the sun’s rays better than other light colour.
It will absorb the heat from sun rays and keep the chicken’s water from freezing, the black coloured will be the most effective and efficient one. It is also be a safer option rather than using electricity.
7. Create a sunroom
Diy to create a sunroom is not that difficult, particularly you only need a wide glass enough to cover up your chicken’s waterer, and place it facing the sunrays with support like wooden or anything else. It will capture the sunrays heat and keep the water from freezing. Your chickens may like to lounging around the glass either cause during winter chicken could easily get sick due to the weather.
8. Ligh bulb and block
We can put a light bulb inside a cinder block and cover the top of with with stone or anything that could conduct the heat but dont use a metal cause it may be extremely hot in the surface. The idea is to put the waterer on top of it and the stone cover on top of cinder block may prevent it for slipping. More importantly it will keep your chicken safe from the electricity.
9. Heated dog bowl
It is a common tools used for keeping your chicken’s water from freezing. It is not that expensive to affort and easy to clean. It keep the water in liquid even in the worst day of winter. You can find it in almost any hardware store. But you must pay attention if you want to use this bowl since it may wide opened and could easily slip if your chickens start to fighting.
10. DIY from a tire
We also can use an unused tire to create diy, first is fill the hole arround the tire with styrofoam or other material that similiar and has the ability to insulate heat. The water tub will be placed inside the tire afterward, but remember to put some material under the water tub to prevent it touch the ground. It will slow the water from freezing, while the tire and the insulate’s material will keep the heat from natural source (sunrays). Indeed it was a cheap yet easy ways to keep your chicken’s water from freezing in winter.
11. Using wooden plate or disc
There is a trick to keep the water from freezing in winter, make a disc from wooden that could float inside the water tub or bucket. The wooden should have some holes in it, you can drilled an approximately 1″ holes and made 4 or 5 holes. The chicken will drink the water through it and keep the wooden floating and made a wave, it almost have a similiar way with a ping pong ball but it may delays the formation of ice longer than ping pong balls.
Thus are the easy ways to keep your chicken’s water from freezing in winter, you also can combine those ways to prevent the water freeze and keep your chicken for being wet. Since the splashes water through the chicken body may cause frostbite and it is dangerous for them.