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Use This Insanely Foolproof Hack To Keep Your Chicken’s Water From Freezing This Winter!

September 6, 2017 by Maat

Use This Insanely Foolproof Hack To Keep Your Chicken’s Water From Freezing This Winter!

Cold weather will soon be here….and that means frozen chicken waterers.

Table of Contents (Quickly Jump To Information)

  • Cold weather will soon be here….and that means frozen chicken waterers.
  • What’s the deal?
  • Word of warning
  • So why does this work?
  • Ok, so why not use fresh water in the bottle?
  • Does the size of the bottle matter?

 

The last thing we want on our farm is for our hens to go without water but it’s sometimes hard to avoid when the temperatures drop – especially if those stainless steel nipples are involved. (Want to get 7 more GENIUS hacks to keep your flock’s water from freezing? Click here)

 

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Yes, they do freeze, and it’s not super easy to prevent them from freezing because of the metal.

 

We only use tubs for water in the winter – even the mason jar waterers get frozen and clogged.

 

But the tubs aren’t foolproof either – they still freeze unless you use a tank heater (and then you’re talking about using electricity).

 

Last winter, we tested a bunch of ways to keep our hen’s water from freezing and found a method from another blogger, Staci at A Chick And Her Garden, that worked better for us than anything else out there.

 

In fact, it’s nearly foolproof, at least for us it was!

 

What’s the deal?

We use large tubs of water – think 40 gallon tubs – for our livestock. I’ve learned that the larger the body of water, the less likely it is to freeze solid.

 

Because we’re soda drinkers, we always have empty 2 liter bottles hanging around the house….perfect for creating a buoyant object to place inside the water tubs.

 

First we filled the empty soda bottles with water, then added 3 cups of table salt to the bottle.

 

Each bottle then went into a 40 gallon tub – and we kept our fingers crossed it would keep the water from freezing.

 

While in very low temperatures the water will still freeze (when it’s 20 below, it’s going to happen no matter WHAT you do), we found that even when it got in the teens in our area, the fresh water didn’t freeze!

herbs for backyard chickens

Word of warning

Now bear in mind, that you don’t want to add salt TO your chicken’s water – that will potentially dehydrate them and mess up their electrolyte balance.

 

You just want to add salt to the water in the bottle.

 

You want to make sure you use a plastic bottle – glass or metal will conduct cold faster. Plastic is better to use in cool temperatures.

 

For this experiment, we found that table salt is better than kosher or other large-crystal salt since it’s easier to create a high-salinity solution with table salt.

 

So why does this work?

Well, you might think it’s because salt water has a lower freezing point than fresh water, and the higher the concentration of dissolved salt, the lower its overall freezing point.

 

However, we’re placing the salt water inside a bottle – which is then placed in the water tub and not in direct contact with the fresh water.

 

So, the lower freezing point of salt water has little effect on the water around it.

 

So the other, more applicable, reason this method works is that the salt water bottle moves in the fresh water because of wind/air currents, mini waves caused by chickens dunking their beaks into the bucket, and natural movements in the earth around it – and moving water is less likely to freeze.

 

Animals also learn that any surface ice around the bottle is weaker, and therefore easier to break (this is why salt water bottles work better than say, ping pong balls which are smaller, less dense, and easier trapped.)

 

Ok, so why not use fresh water in the bottle?


Great question. Adding fresh water would do little to keep the water liquid in lower temperatures – the water inside the bottle would just freeze as fast as the water around it.

 

The lower freezing point of the salt water means it’ll stay liquid and moveable on the water surface longer.

 herbs for backyard chickens

Does the size of the bottle matter?

 

Kind of. If your tub is large and filled with gallons and gallons of water, a small bottle of salt water would have less of an effect.

 

In a smaller tub, a large bottle of water might make it hard for chickens and livestock to get to the water – so in this case, size does matter.


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Worried about your backyard chickens not getting enough water this winter? Use this GENIUS hack to stop water from freezing!

Filed Under: Chickens, Homestead Hacks Tagged With: backyard chickens, chicken waterer, coops, hacks, ice, waterers, winter

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Letha Shanz says

    September 12, 2017 at 1:47 am

    This sounds great. Can,t wait to try it.

  2. Deb says

    October 27, 2017 at 12:18 am

    Excellent idea. Trying it in a rubber feed tub with plastic Arizona tea bottle this winter and making a platform to keep it up off cold ground, both purposes, no bending to refill and clean out., chickens will walk up a ramp to drink.

  3. Kate says

    October 29, 2017 at 6:02 am

    Her where I live it’s-40 for much of the winter. I guess I’m SOL.

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  • We've added several new mugs and tumblers to our shop this week. I'm excited because this is a project we've had in the works for a while!
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I think the backyard chicken life should be celebrated. Chickens are such wonderful pets!
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I love taking these mugs with me to the coop (filled with hot chocolate since I can't drink coffee) and spending some quiet time with my flock before the day really begins!
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Featured: "Life Is Better On The Farm" mug. Link in profile.
  • I have a love /hate relationship with this tiny rooster. He's all of 3 inches high but loves to attack my feet. I seriously have no idea why.
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He's a rescue and I'm pretty sure the reason I got him is because, to someone not experienced with chickens, he can be scary.
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But I wear boots in my coop all the time. So, he's essentially a mosquito. It's pretty cute.
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Sometimes he wanders off and I have to catch him. He doesn't like that, and protests loudly. But he doesn't attack me. He just squaks loudly.
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But when I have a treat? He's my best friend. What a character!
  • Well we've been battling an ice storm for the past couple days (which is why you didn't hear from me yesterday). Unfortunately, on Saturday, the wind blew the door to my coop shut, so the fluffy butts had to deal with the ice and wind.
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It was so icy here that several telephone poles bent, and the electric wires were nearly on the ground (not on our farm, on a main road).
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About half my flock was wet and cold and shivering. So, everyone went into dog crates and into the cabin, where I could run a heater safely.
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The worst of the lot - my 2 cochin bantam hens - also got their feathers blown dry.
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I don't regularly blow dry my flock, but these 2 hens LOVED it! They just sat there while the hair dryer was on low heat, and enjoyed hanging out with me.
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I think they liked the warmth - they were pretty cold after all! They got plenty of WormBGone (which has warming herbs in it) and their layer feed that we blend ourselves, so they were happy!
  • I'm happy to tell you that reader Diane reports her rooster, Victor, is doing much better after an episode of mysterious blindness. .
Diane emailed me a week ago to ask advice to help Victor out. He suddenly went blind, without much explanation.
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There's a lot of reasons why any animal can go blind temporarily, and Diane did the best thing, which is consult a veterinarian. .
I'm glad to hear Victor's sight has returned, and he's back with his lovely girlfriends in their coop, just in time for Valentine's Day! ❤
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I'll be sending Victor and his girlfriends some BEE A Happy Hen to celebrate!
  • Now that the days are getting longer, it looks like I need to remove even more young roosters from the main coop. There were 3 that didn't cause any trouble over winter (very pretty ones, too), but now that spring is clearly on everyone's mind, they're bothering the hens too much.
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Most of these roosters are ones I bred - Easter Egger mixes that have pea combs and beards. They're very pretty!
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In the tornado last week, one of my temporary coops lost its life, so I'll probably use pieces of that to complete a new coop for these roosters, and give each one a couple ladies.
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I have a feeling by the end of this year, we'll be over run with lovely, bearded chickens. These guys do carry the blue egg laying gene - one's mother was Mama who laid olive colored eggs and the other's mother was Hawk who laid blue eggs).
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If paired with hens who carry the gene, their offspring might lay colored eggs as well.
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We're still getting green eggs from someone (I still haven't figured out who), and I think when the remainder of the roosters leave the coop, it'll prompt my other hens to start laying.
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And this year, I'm having Black Copper Marans hens sent to me, so pretty soon, we should have very colorful egg baskets every morning!

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