Auto Waterer

Revision June 6, 2010 - If you would like to see the right way to make a gravity fed water please look at this post.

Good evening. Today was interesting, we went over to our neighbor's farm to help him worm his goats and plant potatoes. It turns out that a goat's horns are just the perfect height to gore your testicles. But I escaped unharmed and I'd like to think the goats are slightly less worm infested.

The other contraption I have been working on is a gravity fed watering system. Right now we need to give water to the chickens we have to go into the coops, pull out the 2 three gallon water buckets, rinse and refill them, and put them back. This is all very labor intensive and takes quite a while. So what other people have done is put a bucket on the outside of the coop and have it feed water to an automatic waterer by gravity.

This is what I came up with:



Basically, it is a 5 gallon bucket with a hole in the side, there is this handy little fitting that lets you put a valve through it, then I have Mr. Tube there run the water down to the waterer which is actually meant for horses. I found 8 of them and they are worth $30 each so I figured they would be good to use as we are trying to not spend a lot of money we don't have to.

It worked well enough except it was too close to the ground so when the chickens scratched they filled it with dirt and chicken poop, leaving a less than hygienic result:



So, back to the drawing board, I am going to try and suspend it rather than have it raised on a little platform like I did with version one.

-Elliott