Keep Chicken Drinking Water From Freezing Homesteading Hack | The Homestead Survival

How to Keep Chicken’s Drinking Water From Freezing Homesteading Hack will come in super handy because this winter had been breaking records lows temperatures.

For those with hens, we know the need for fresh water at all times. Living in the North, where winters can be brutal and fall below freezing, the water can easily freeze as well as the steel nipples in the droplets. Because of the metal, it is hard to prevent them from freezing up. With tubs, you can keep them from freezing unless it is connected to a tank heater. The larger tub of water, the less it will freeze solid. To keep them from completely freezing, get couple of empty two-liter bottles, fill them with water, and ad 3 cups of table salt inside. The fresh water in the tub won’t freeze, but the water in the bottle will.

How so? The salt water’s lower freezing point, has very little effect on water surrounding it. Of course, salt water makes you dehydrated. The bottle will move in fresh water from a mix of wind air current and movements from the chickens constantly sticking their beaks in to prevent the water from sitting still and freezing. The thin ice that can be around the bottle is easy to break open as well. Putting in fresh water won’t do anything to keep the rest not from freezings it would actually freeze up faster.

Get big, plastic bottles as plastic does not freeze up like metal and a big buoyancy helps keep the ice apart. The size and use of salt water in the bottles serves to detract a frozen section in the tub and easier for chicken to drink water.