Day 172

Realizing housing nearly fifty chickens without an “in house” source of water was a bit arduous. Knowing that we still had to provide fresh water daily in spite of this was even more frustrating. With our first chicken winter looming, we knew that not only would we need fresh water every day, we would need to keep it from freezing. Double the frustration.Realizing this right after we had just completed a major grading and solar project where there were holes in the ground that could have made a potential plumbing project that much easier. Frustration times three.

But we couldn't dwell on that realization. We had a winter on the horizon and needed to troubleshoot how to keep fifty birds from freezing. Even though our barn isn't heated, all the research we had read helped us understand that we didn't really have to worry about the birds freezing. If we kept the barn free from drafts and provided bedding, they would be fine. We even went the extra mile and provided lots of straw bales for extra insulation. Our biggest concern was to make sure we kept our water from freezing.

Because the electrical situation in the barn was a bit outdated, some of the more high tech options available to avoid water freezing wouldn't quite work. They say necessity breeds invention. Seeing how many different innovative ideas were out there to keep water from freezing made that seem quite true.

Being frugal and somewhat unsure of our next step, we went with a basic option. Use our regular metal waterers and just change them more often. This proved futile. We just couldn't keep up with Mother Nature. On colder days, the water froze way too soon and it just wasn't feasible.

So we went with the second option. Use reusable plastic containers and put a golf ball in them. The ball moving in the container would keep the water moving and make it much less likely to freeze as fast. 

This was just as futile. Now we had frozen water and frozen golf balls.

We had to keep the water warm. Our cheap options didn't work. We needed to dig into our wallet.