We have been using chicken nipple waterers for our chickens for a few years now.  We really love them.  We have found them to be easy to install (we put most of them on 5-gallon buckets, but also a few on smaller containers), easy to maintain, easy to train the chickens to, and durable.  We like not having to clean out poopy waterers constantly.  And this winter we were really excited because we found that a 250-watt bucket de-icer lowered into each of our 5-gallon bucket chicken nipple waterers kept them from freezer even when it went to -30F.  So they were even easy to maintain in the winter.

5-gallon bucket waterers in our chicken pen

Chicken Nipples

Chicken nipple on a soda bottle to train the chicks in the brooder.

So why are we not using them in winter anymore?

Frostbite.

The last couple of winters we had several chickens with large combs and wattles.  We struggled with a lot of frostbite throughout the winter with those birds, and figured it completely had to do with the size.  So we selected carefully through our breeding and went into this winter with two roosters with relatively small combs, but pretty big wattles, plus one hen that had a big comb.  All the rest of the hens had very small combs.  We thought that this would help a bunch with the frostbite situation.  Unfortunately, as soon as we got a few days into our first cold snap, the two roosters began getting terrible frostbite on their combs and wattles.  Plus a couple of hens had a small amount on their combs too.  We were pretty frustrated, since the comb size on the males was definitely smaller than last year and we really didn’t expect to have much frostbite this year.  Also, even when the temperatures warmed up and were hovering right around freezing, the frostbite was getting worse.

Then within one week’s time I visited two friends in our area who also have chickens.  I was surprised to see that none of their chickens, including their roosters, had any frostbite at all.  None.  And their combs and wattles were much bigger than our birds’.  I looked at their housing, and it was not as protective as ours was.  There were gaps for drafts, and they were not using heat lamps at all – whereas our coops are draft free and include heat lamps.  I came home and told my husband and we scoured the internet and tried to figure out what could be different about our living conditions that was causing all this frostbite.  Then, one day while I was outside watching the chickens, the light came on in my brain.  I watched them drinking from the spouts and “ding!” I realized that our friends didn’t use the chicken nipple waterers.  So I continued watching as they drank and noticed that they spent a long time drinking, and during that time the water was dripping all over their combs and wattles and faces.  When they finished they would shake off, but not all the water came off.  Plus, the time while they were drinking and they were wet was quite long because they can only get a small amount from the nipple at a time.  I set up a dish of water and watched.  They spent very little time drinking, compared to the chicken nipple waterer.  Plus, while they were drinking their combs were staying perfectly dry.  The roosters wattles did get a little wet, but they shook them off immediately and very little moisture was left.

I was so excited to tell my husband that I had figured out the problem and get all the waterers switched out for traditional gravity waterers.  And then we had unseasonably warm weather…for several weeks.  Which was wonderful, but it didn’t help to figure out if the new water situation was indeed going to solve the frostbite dillemna.  But during that time all the frostbitten combs and wattles healed up beautifully.

Then our most recent cold snap hit.  And it was a good one.  A true test of the theory that the nipples were causing the frostbite.  Our daytime temps did not go above freezing for over a week, and the night temps were negative teens, with windchill we were into negative twenties a few times.  Definitely cold enough to cause frostbite.  And what happened?  Not even ONE little bit of frostbite anywhere on any of the birds.  And nothing has changed about their housing or lifestyle except the waterers.

We are so glad to have figured out this whole mess and hopeful that we have experienced our last battle with frostbite in our flock.  We hope that this post can help other people that might have the same issue we had.  From here on out we will be using the chicken nipple waterers during the warm months, and then putting them away for the winter and using traditional gravity waterers.  We will lose the benefits of not having to clean out the waterers so much, as well as the benefit of them staying thawed in the bitter cold (even the heated gravity waterers wont stay thawed in the extreme cold snaps here) – but at least we will save our chickens the misery of frostbite.  And that is definitely worth it.