Poultry Waterers

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chicken waterer, poultry waterers

In some strange manner it intrigues me when I have a problem with poultry keeping and in doing random research find the same problem discussed a hundred years or more ago.  Such was the case with chicken waterers.  We try to use the type in which the container is filled while upside down, the base affixed, then the waterer flipped so that the water trickles out into the base as needed.  It works well usually although I confess to less than 100% comprehension of the principle by which it works even after Dear Husband has explained it multiple times, but it does not work well in a small confined space.

The problem with this system is that in a small space a hen with young chicks fills the base with dirt.  In her never-ending scratching the hen plows through the sandy earth flinging the soil behind into the base of the waterer and in short order the whole contraption is completely and hopelessly clogged with no access to water.

Someone identifying himself as “Cock of the Walk”, did a review of this type waterer in 1873 and described exactly the same issue.  He concluded with, “Now sir, you will excuse this long tirade when I say that my object is to request some of your correspondents to inform me if I have proved myself incapable “to run the machine,” and that he will inform me if there is to be found anything better and more efficiently adapted to the purpose of supplying water for chickens in coops.”  While this gentleman’s waterer was made of crockery and ours is plastic the principle is the same, and no, dear sir, all these years later we are still plagued with this inadequacy.

Just as today poultry keepers were always searching for a better waterer and as often as not they fashioned one from materials found about the home place just as we do.  “I have about a peck of good fresh sugar-trough gourd seed that I dislike to destroy.  If any one will send a two-cent stamp for mailing a package I will send some seeds free.  The gourds are large, convenient, and useful.  They make cheap and excellent troughs for watering chickens. . .”.  I suspect gourds have served as drinking vessels for countless generations.

Prior to the second half of the Victorian era one of the best sources of information is early Dutch paintings.  Many of the paintings feature a natural water source – a spring, small creek, pond, etc. – which leads me to believe in those days prior to modern plumbing such sources may have been so common poultry simply drank from the stream or pond.  The closest thing I’ve found to a waterer from the 18^th century or earlier is a shallow redware dish in a few of the paintings.

My usual closing, “Blissful Meals”, isn’t especially appropriate but I’ll say it anyway.  I hope you enjoyed the piece.

Bib:  Poultry World.  Aug. 1881; Gleanings in Bee Culture.  April 1, 1893.

BREED FOR HEALTH AS WELL AS TRAITS©

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breeding poultry, National Poultry Improvement Plan, NPIP

In 1935 the National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP) was introduced to ensure the health and well-being of American flocks and since then has grown to include 49 states who seek to regulate the health of chickens and other poultry including game breeds and show birds.  At least for backyard flocks participation in NPIP is voluntary, probably appealing to those who may want to sell or trade birds more so than to someone with three hens in suburbia kept for eggs and companionship.  For commercial growers NPIP means Americans can expect healthy birds to set on their dinner tables.

Even with NPIP to encourage biosecurity measures and healthy habits common sense goes a long way in raising poultry.  The best example I can think of is for breeding top quality Americaunas with the trademark muffs and beards, red earlobes, wattles and combs one would naturally choose parents with the best of all of these characteristics as breeding stock rather than purchasing a mixed breed and hoping for that one chick that might possess the desired traits.

Perusing the online Breeders Directory makes a lot more sense than shopping flea markets and taking chances with the lineage of breeding stock.  If one’s only interest is eggs for the table then by all means choose whatever appeals to the senses, but if there is any desire for producing quality chicks for sale or show then step up your game and research breeders and breeds.  Now, let’s see what grandpa might have advised.

It is one of the well-known laws of heredity that “like produces like,”—what is bred in the fowl will out in the chick.  The tendencies to certain habits are readily transmitted from parent to offspring and when handed down for a number of generations, the tendency becomes more firmly fixed.

To have healthy poultry we should breed for health as carefully as for any desired standard point.  Breeding for health should be in the foremost consideration since with the habit of health firmly fixed in the flock we have a solid bed-rock foundation on which to build up a strain well fitted to develop all other desirable qualities.  Breeding for health should begin not alone with the parent stock, but if possible with the grandparents.

In selecting breeding stock be sure to accept only strong, vigorous, healthy specimens, birds which are well developed, fully matured and which have never had any serious illness. . . No matter how good a specimen a bird may be, if it is not mature, does not possess size, vigor and a sound constitution, do not permit it to take a place in the breeding pen. . . Spending several dollars worth time and medicine in an attempt to cure a dollar bird, thereby endangering the health of the balance of the flock, is suicidal policy. . .

Inbreeding is bad practice.  Hereditary tendencies possessed alike by both parents are prone to be exaggerated in the chicks.  For this reason never mate males and females possessing the same fault.

Additions to the poultry yard should be made with the greatest care, both as to the choice of birds to be introduced so far as their breeding and characteristics are concerned, and their state of health.  It is to be pointed out that frequently a strange bird has been the means of introducing disease into a previously healthy yard—disease that has taken months to eradicate.  The system adopted by careful breeders is to keep purchased fowls by themselves for two or three weeks, so that any incipient disease may have time to declare itself and that the condition of the bird may be fully observed.

Bib:  Reliable Poultry Remedies.  1913.  “Poultry-keeping as an Industry for Farmers and Cottagers”.  1906.

National Poultry Improvement  Plan, 1506 Klondike Rd., Suite 101, Conyers, GA  30094, 770-922-3496.