Over the years we have had laying hens and often times, during the cold Canadian winter seasons, we have struggled with maintaining a healthy strong flock. Having fresh clean water is key to raising healthy laying hens, all year long. Winter months bring on a greater challenge to providing water and how to keep the chickens’ water from freezing.
We are fortunate to have electricity in our chicken coop. This provides us with the option to use a product called the “Universal Heated Waterer Deicer” and with the introduction of this product into our chicken coop, it keeps the waterer ice-free in the winter months.
To use this waterer deicer, you need to have access to electricity in your chicken coop. We place the deicer on the floor inside the coop because the outside temperatures with the blowing wind causes the water to freeze in a short amount of time and we found that when we placed the water container inside the coop that we were successful in keeping the chickens’ water from freezing.
We like to use a large plastic water container and fill about half full with clean fresh water daily. This container is then placed on top of the water deicer (which is plugged into the power outlet). We empty the water container and clean it every day. The chickens have access to water at all times both day and night.
Today, the temperature outside is -23 with 42 km/h wind gusts and as you can see from the picture here the water is not frozen. The water container will be brought inside to be refilled and cleaned out. This will ensure the hens have fresh clean water and will help keep the water from freezing. I would also like to mention that our chicken coop has no insulation in the walls and we keep the coop warm by placing shavings on the floor and an infrared light turned on during extreme cold days.
This deicer is thermostatically controlled.
