Making nipple drinkers for chickens with your own hands
Nipple drinkers for chickens with their skilful hands have become an excellent alternative to simple containers of water, where poultry often, due to carelessness, crawls with their paws, carrying garbage with them into clean water and overturning it, depriving themselves of drinking. You can make a nipple drinker for chickens with your own hands: the design is quite simple to manufacture and practical to use, it is widely used both in industrial poultry farming and in a private farm.
Nipple drinkers for chickens
Automatic drinker device
Self-made nipple devices for drinking poultry and livestock work on the basis of supplying water only at the moment when animals come to it in order to quench their thirst. In this case, the water does not leak away, but remains in special drip catchers. A fully automated poultry drinking process is formed by embedding nipples in a pipe connected to a water tank or directly to a water supply system and with a built-in drip catcher, so that the device of a nipple drinker is not complicated.
In agricultural stores, the assortment of ready-made nipple drinkers is quite wide, but such a device is easy to make with your own hands just by taking a plastic bottle and it works. The price of cheap full-fledged devices with capacities of 1 liter in the Russian Federation starts from 500 rubles. You can purchase separately as many components as you need, their cost - from 20 rubles.
The nipple drinker device includes:
- a plastic pipe with a recommended diameter of about 10 cm,
- drainage system,
- nipples, adapters and plugs,
- drop catchers,
- water pressure regulator.
Among the construction tools, for the purpose of making a nipple drinker on your own, you will need a screwdriver and a knife to cut holes and new original ideas.
Benefits of automatic drinkers and maintenance
An easy-to-manufacture and easy-to-use chicken nipple drinker to provide water to pies, broilers and chickens is convenient enough for pets who do not need time to learn how to use it, as the chickens begin to drink intuitively, noticing the accumulated drops on the nipples.
Even chickens are able to cope with an automated drinking device, it is quite simple and quick to accustom them to it, the main thing is that they are collapsible.
A do-it-yourself nipple drinker for chickens is convenient for use in agriculture when raising chickens and quail, can be used by pigs and goats, is quite stable and durable, provides drinking of birds with clean water in metered volumes and with a drop catcher reduces costs by 30-40% compared to regular drinkers.
By making multiple holes in the mountings, the height of the automated poultry drinker can be adjusted as the chickens grow, and nipple drinkers for poultry become almost universal.
Maintenance of the nipple drinker for broiler birds does not take long, so all that is needed for the full operation of the device is to ensure that water flows into the supply pipe or to add it to the reservoir tank, from where it is taken.
The automated drinker is attached to the cage and, while ensuring reliable fixation, provides the birds with water without human control.
Nipple drinker options
Automated nipple drinkers can be easily made by hand in different versions with a plastic bottle, from the simplest to the most complex.
The simplest drinking design
To make the simplest chicken drinker, you will need a plastic bucket or bottle, nipple valves and plumbing Teflon thread.
For drinking devices for adult chickens, 180 nipples are needed, 360 is enough for chickens.
The step-by-step instruction includes the following operations:
- drilling holes for nipples in the bottom of the container,
- screwing in nipples with sealing of the connection point using a teflon plumbing thread,
- fastening of the structure made.
It is necessary to attach the manufactured structure using plastic ties or bolts. In this case, it is necessary not to forget that the nipples should be at the level of the chicken's eyes. Therefore, nipple drinkers and their installation will not take long.
How to make the simplest design of a poultry drinker, you can watch the video and photo of the drawings.
The device with the arrangement of the container in the center
A more difficult option to make yourself is a drinking bowl with a central location of a container for water, for which you will need:
- plugs and nipple valves,
- pipe and adapter for it T-shape,
- plumbing tape,
- fastening.
In the manufacture of such a structure, special pipes with a square section or ordinary plumbing made of plastic are selected.
For 10-20 chickens, 1-2 nipples are required. A meter-long pipe usually holds up to 4 pieces.
The manufacturing process includes:
- cutting the pipe into 3 parts, 2 of which will be horizontal with inserted nipples and 1 vertical,
- drilling holes in the horizontal parts of the pipe for installing nipples in them,
- installation of nipples and plugs with reinforcement of joints with plumbing teflon tape,
- connection of 3 parts of the pipe by means of a T-shaped conductor with reinforcement of the joints using a Teflon thread.
How to do it step by step, you can watch the video.
Such a complicated version of the nipple drinker has one drawback: it has a small capacity for water, so you will have to monitor its replenishment. Many people recommend using a larger diameter water tank pipe.
Side drive device
It differs from the previous one only in the location of the storage tank, which can also be a pipe or bottle made of plastic. A flexible hose with an adapter is used for the connection.
Installation of droplet eliminators and heating
In order to reduce water consumption, automated drinking bowls for chickens are equipped with special drip catchers, which look like small-sized cups located directly under the nipples. They serve to catch water so that it does not fall to the floor, such nipple drinkers are indispensable for chickens. At the same time, it is an additional source from which chickens can also drink water.
Drop eliminators are purchased together with nipples in specialized stores or are made by hand. If there is no desire to make devices for collecting water, then each time you will have to resort to a rag lined under the drinking bowl.
For self-manufacture of drop catchers, you can take as a basis ordinary construction plastic profiles or simple household plastic bottles with a capacity of 0.5 liters.
You can watch the video how to make droplet eliminators. And then nipple drinkers for your chickens can be easily assembled with your own skillful hands.
Many farmers supply their own inventions with heating systems that prevent water from freezing during the cold season. For this, heating elements installed under the water tank or water heaters for aquariums are used.