Every one of these will hold water. That was never the question. The question is what you are doing with a scrub brush in August, and how much of your Saturday it takes.
Every waterer on the shelf is sold on gallons, plus a line on the box about how many birds it serves. That number tells you how often you carry water out there, which is a chore that takes ninety seconds. It tells you nothing about the chore that eats your weekend.
Here is what happens to open water in a run. A hen drinks and rinses her beak into the pan. She scratches, and the litter lands in it. The sun hits the surface and green starts in the crease your hand does not reach. By day four there is a slick ring you can feel with a thumbnail. Nobody dies from it. It just means somebody is out there with a brush, in the heat, again.
So we rank these by who cleans them. The cheapest thing in this guide also gives you the cleanest water, which is the sort of answer we like being able to give. One caveat before the list: the clean-water designs ask the birds to learn something, and the simple ones ask you to scrub. Nothing here skips both.
Some links here are affiliate links. If you buy through one, the store pays us a cut. It does not change your price and it does not decide the order of this list — it is the reason we can spend the whole page telling you the twenty-dollar kit wins.
If you buy one thing on this page
Horizontal nipples screw into the side of a five-gallon bucket you already have in the shed. The water lives sealed inside. A hen pecks the pin, gets her swallow, and nothing she does gets back into the reservoir — no litter, no droppings, no sun on the surface to grow anything. Cleaning is a rinse at refill, and that is the whole job. RentACoop's twelve-pack comes with the drill bit and the dribble dishes, which is the version to get.
A learning week. Tap the pin in front of them, hang a scrap of foil off it, and pull the old waterer once you have watched every bird drink.
Ducks and geese — they need to submerge a bill. Also anyone below freezing without a heated bucket, because a nipple ices shut before the water does.
Two things people get wrong. Buy horizontal, not vertical. The vertical kind hangs down, drips more and does poorly in cold. Horizontal nipples sit in the sidewall and the bird pecks straight ahead, the way she pecks at everything else. And set them higher than looks right while you are holding the drill — a hen should reach slightly up. Too low and they carry water off and make mud. If the flock is mixed, drill a second row for the bantams. Four holes cost the same as two.
If you would rather not drill anything, RentACoop sells the bucket already fitted out — a good rig at three or four times the parts kit. It is not the pick, because the bucket was never the hard part.
A cup waterer is a small dish with a trigger paddle in it. The bird drinks it down, bumps the paddle, and it refills from the bucket. It splits the difference: the tank stays sealed like a nipple system, but the bird drinks out of open water she can see, so there is no training week. Put cups on a bucket in the morning and the run has it worked out by lunch.
The cost is that a cup is still an open dish, and open dishes collect. Not much — an ounce or two of water, not a gallon pan — but by the end of a week each one has a film in the bottom and something floating in it. Thirty seconds a cup, weekly. That is the honest reason cups sit second and not first.
For chicks, or for anyone who does not want to stand in a run tapping a pin at a pullet, this is where to start. Plenty of people run cups and nipples on the same bucket and let the birds pick — which is what the five-gallon RentACoop rig already is, and a sensible way to hedge.
Same fifteen-minute drill job. Buy cups and nipples both, split the wall.
Cups, nipples, stand, lid. Pay for the assembly, not the water.
The part the box leaves off
A nipple ices shut while there is still liquid water in the bucket, and the bird has no way to tell you. A plastic fount cracks at the seam and you find it at noon in a puddle. Galvanized steel takes the ice and shrugs, which is most of why it is still sold. Nothing here is freeze-proof. Some of it is freeze-survivable, and that is the honest word.
The one we still own
Inner tube, outer tube, a seal and a spring that pull a vacuum so the trough holds a constant level. No pump, no float, nothing to fail. The sloped top keeps them from roosting on it and fouling it from above, the seams take a hard freeze, and it will outlive the coop. Little Giant still makes theirs in the States, in two, three, five and eight gallon. Three is the size a person can carry full without hating it.
It sits third because of one ring. That trough is the dirtiest surface in the run, and green starts in the crease your fingers cannot reach. Weekly scrub with an angled brush, minimum. In July, twice.
Cheaper, lighter, and you can see the level without lifting it, which is worth having. Two strikes: sun through a translucent wall grows algae inside the tank where steel grows none, and a hard freeze splits the seam. They sell them in pairs, which tells you something.
Whatever you buy, buy a brush with a bent head. The trough ring is where the work is and a straight brush skates right over it. Ours lives on a nail by the spigot.
An open rubber pan is dead last by our criterion and we own three of them. You scrub it every day in warm weather, because nothing sits between the water and the run. It is the worst thing on this page to keep clean and the best thing on it to keep at all.
Ducks settle it before anything else does. A duck has to submerge her whole bill to clear her nares, and she will not thrive on nipples no matter what a forum tells you. She will also foul and destroy a galvanized fount in a week, because a duck's idea of drinking involves standing in it. Ducks means a rubber pan, changed daily. That is not a compromise. That is the correct equipment.
The other thing rubber does is ice. Turn the pan over, step on the back, and a clean disc drops out — no hammer, no cracked plastic, no wet gloves. On a morning when the power is out and the heated things are just things, a rubber pan carried twice a day is the whole watering system. Fortex's eight-quart pan is the one on our porch, and we have not managed to kill one.
The winter answer we use. A thermostatic plate under a double-wall metal fount, drawing power only below about thirty-five degrees. Buy the fount once, add the base, done — instead of a whole second waterer that is only right for four months. Dry covered spot, and check the cord in spring.
Heater built into the body, hangs so the litter stays out. It earns its slot for one reason: if there is no flat dry place to set a base, hanging is the only way to do this. Otherwise it is more money for a plastic tank you will still be scrubbing come April.
Ducks, chicks, ice, and the backup that never fails. Reinforced rubber, no seam to split. If you buy one thing for winter and one thing for ducks, it is the same thing.
One number we will not give you is how much your flock drinks in a heat wave. It moves with the weather, the breed and the shade, and anybody quoting a tidy figure is guessing. Fill in the morning, look again at five, and let the birds tell you. If a bird stops drinking, that is a call to a vet, not a shopping problem.
Cleanest water there is, cheapest thing here, one week of training. Freezes first.
No training at all, weekly wipe. The right start for chicks and for the impatient.
Bulletproof, heat-able, lasts forever. Weekly scrub of that trough ring, twice in July.
You can see the level. You will also see the algae, and the seam in a hard freeze.
A scrub every day. Also the only right answer for ducks, and the one that beats ice.
Nipple kit, steel fount, heated base. Covers a backyard flock year round; the rest is convenience, and we would rather you spent it on feed.
PORCH DOGS
PASTURE PETS
PORCH DOGS
Links on this page may earn us a commission from the store. The price you pay does not change, and prices move — every figure here is what we saw last time we looked, not a quote.