Saturday, May 15, 2010

Chicken Nipples

You didn't know there were such things did you?

Well, ours don't have any YET, but they're on the way.

It's my mom's fault, really.  She and my dad have been married 25 years, and decided to celebrate that in large fashion.  Of course, to qualify for "large fashion" one must have all one's relatives from far and wide show up, right?  In the middle of the busiest work time for Hubby?  In the middle of garden planting season?  Chicken season?  Turkey season?  Yes.  See how much I love her?  So we have to leave in a week or so to participate largely, fashionably (ahem), and there will be about 80 creatures needing tending here.  Forty-eight of whom will be putting away some 20-30 lbs of feed a day, to say nothing of water.

I REALLY don't like asking people to do stuff like this.  It can be hard.  Heavy.  And you might step in something.  And anyone who I would ask would need to drive to get here, and I probably couldn't bring myself to ask them to do it more than once in the four days we will be gone.

God is good, and he let me stumble upon this.  Especially this version, with the toilet float valve.  Awesome. :)  By the time this posts, I will hopefully have all the pieces ready to work with.  I got extra chicken nipples from Farmtek.  The shipping is very high even for small amounts/items, so if you need a few, drop me a line.  I ordered a couple extra. ;)

Hopefully we'll have this figured out and operational before we go, then my neighbor can just swing by long enough to see that everyone is a live and pecking.  If not, I'm not sure what she could do about it, but...

Now to figure out a mega-feeder...

4 comments:

Danielle said...

How did the chicken nipples work for you? We are debating on getting some to rig up a huge watering system for the girls, but I need some input!

EllaJac said...

Yes, they work!! I have yet to do a post about it, but we got a 1 1/2" pvc pipe, about 5 feet long and put 5 nipples into it. It's gravity fed from a toilet-valve bucket, and it has worked fabulously! We were able to be gone for four days and they had fresh water the whole time.

The only downsides for me are the garden hose and pvc - both are unstable plastics and I don't like the idea of my food eating some of those chemicals. We can change the pipe out to something else fairly easily, but not sure about the hose...

Danielle said...

I'm a visual learner, I'd love to see pics! Thanks for the response so quickly!

EllaJac said...

Danielle, I'm having trouble finding the pics I took... They might be on my other memory card (That I swapped out before my folks' anniversary party), so it may take me a while to get a post together.

However, here are photos that are very similar, and where we got the idea.

Hope that helps!