The quest for a clean water bowl

The flu has been in the news quite a bit lately. I can’t feel smug at having been vaccinated because the vaccine missed the mark this year. It is bound to happen now and then. It would take a crystal ball to know for sure which strain was going to make it big in any given year. We had a laugh the other morning when one of the morning shows had a headline that read, “Winter causes flu.” Terry said, “It’s like that old song,” and he sang, “Whenever two or more of you are gathered in His name, you get the flu.”

It is also the season of catalogs. I got one from Premier Poultry Supplies a couple weeks ago, and I saw a “chick stand,” which was a plastic platform designed for holding the food and water for chicks so they wouldn’t kick chips in the trough. What a great idea! Plus, we could use it now for the water bowl in the big coop. After we put the pinless peepers on, we (and by “we” I mean mostly Hilda) got to worrying that the peepered hens couldn’t drink from the nipple waterer. So Hilda got out the heated dog bowl. And the girls filled it with wood chips and poop every day and night (Hilda changed it in the afternoon).

My first thought was to put it on bricks, and that helped some.

Heated dog bowl on bricks

When I saw the chick stand, that seemed even better. Hilda agreed and put in the order. The chick stand came on Friday, and I put it in the coop Saturday morning. There is a puzzling aspect to the design. The outer edge comes down to about ½” from the floor while the edge of the hole in the middle is much thinner. The obvious question is why is there a hole in the middle in the first place? Unless the food is directly over the hole, a chick could fall down in the hole and be trapped. If the food is directly over the hole, will there still be room for the waterer on the side? We’ll have to see when the time comes.

Chick stand with a big hole in the middle

Meanwhile, the dog bowl sits nicely in the middle. At first the girls were skeptical. Would they stand on the platform? If not, could they reach the water? I thought maybe they could, but no one stepped up to demonstrate while I was watching.

The girls regard the new platform with suspicion

This morning, however, I saw them drinking from it. They can reach the bowl without standing on the platform. Furthermore, there were no wood chips in it.

The peepers do seem to be helping. The feathers are growing back on Blanche’s back.

Blanche with new back feathers

Dorothy is sporting the beginning of tail feathers as well, I think. It’s hard to tell when they are so small.

Dorothy's tail feathers may be growing back

I have mentioned that Hilda shovels the snow from around the coop door. I offer the following photo as evidence that chickens will, in fact, walk in the snow. This shows a trail from the coop door to the shade shelters, which they have been using as dust baths. All it takes is sufficient motivation.

Chicken tracks in the snow