How Do I Keep My Chickens’ Water from Freezing? Frozen Water in the Coop.
You’re moving into winter with your flock and you’ve run into a serious problem that is based on these three inescapable facts:
When the temperature gets below the freezing point, water turns to ice.
Chickens need water to stay alive and healthy.
Chickens don’t eat ice.
Welcome to the problem that has plagued farmers ever since there have been domestic animals in cold climates. When I was a kid growing up on a Minnesota farm in the 1950’s and 1960’s, we had a large wooden water tank for our cattle. Long after all the puddles in the farmyard had turned to solid ice, the tank water remained unfrozen, because the tank was huge. The large thermal mass contained in all that water took a while to cool down to freezing. And since the cows were constantly drinking, the water was always getting stirred around, preventing the surface from getting cold enough to form an ice film on top. Plus, when the water level of the tank went down, we would drag a hose to the tank and fill it up with water from the well; water that was much warmer than the frigid winter air. As we replenished water, we were also replenishing heat.
Of course, as winter progressed, the water continued to get colder and eventually ice would form. That’s when we fired up the tank heater; a big steel contraption that was submerged in the tank. Imagine a water-tight wood stove with the stove-pipe chimney sticking out of the water on one end and the damper and door on the other end and you’ve got the picture. We would fill up the heater with old broken fence posts, and chunks of the old boxelder tree that we’d cut the year before, or whatever other random pieces of wood wound up in the wood pile, plus a few corncobs, which burn amazingly hot, then we’d add a few old paper feed bags for kindling, toss in a match, and eventually the heater would be belching smoke, melting ice, and heating water. It was a little crude and labor intensive, but it worked great.
I was six or seven years old when my dad installed an automatic drinker for the cattle. I really felt that we’d joined the jet set. It was directly connected to the well by an underground pipe and the water level was regulated automatically by a float valve, so it always stayed full—no hose dragging required. Best of all, it had a thermostatically controlled electric heater, so the water never froze.
The automatic drinker was a gigantic milestone of progress and modernity in my childhood memories, so much so that I had to stare in amused wonder a few years ago when I ran across an ad for a “wood-fired natural cedar hot tub” on one of those trendy “lifestyle” websites. The accompanying picture showed our old water tank and tank heater. Okay, it wasn’t the very same one—it was all new and slicked-up and there were people lounging in the cow tank. But it was exactly the same set-up.
The moral of this story is that the way we prevented water for our animals from freezing back in the day, and the way generations of farmers did it before us, was to keep the water temperature above the freezing point. You can do it by burning old fence posts or by heating the water with electric heaters—but it’s simply a matter of applying heat. Problem solved. End of article.
Oh. But what are the best ways of applying heat? And what if there’s no logistically easy way for you to apply heat. I guess there are some things that need to be discussed. So, let’s do that.
If Your Coop Has Access to Electricity
While there are any number of fuels and heat sources that can heat water, practicality and safety dictate that we use electricity since it isn’t safe to have open flames around combustible chicken litter. If you have a way to get electrical power to your coop, keeping your birds’ water supply thawed becomes straight-forward. It’s just a matter of choosing from a number of electrical heating options.
Heat the coop: If you keep your entire coop above freezing, it isn’t necessary to have a separate heat source for the water. Opinion is divided on the importance or necessity of heating the coop in the winter, and I guarantee that it’s one subject that can get any random gathering of flock keepers into a heated argument. If there was a way to capture the heat from the argument and use it to keep the chicken water from freezing, all our problems would be solved. But since this article is about keeping water thawed and not about heating coops, I’ll say no more on this subject and will hastily move on.
Heated Water Fount Base: Slide one of these guys under your water fount, plug it in, and you’re good to go. The heat coils in these units are activated by a thermostat that keeps the water just above freezing, so there’s no chance of the water getting too hot.
Heated dog bowl: Thermostatically controlled heated dog bowls work just like the heated water fount bases, only on a much smaller scale. If you only have a few hens these work well. The downside of a bowl or any water container with a large exposed water surface is that you can be absolutely certain that the chickens will poop in their water and kick it full of litter. Because they’re chickens.
Submersible Birdbath Heater: This is another thermostatically controlled option. You can dunk these into any water containers you already have. Obviously, there’s no way to put them into sealed systems like double-walled metal water founts, but they would work well in open pans or even a bucket with nipple drinkers.
Water Founts with Built-in Heaters: Buy one of these and you’re getting the whole meal deal, usually for a lower price than you’d pay for the water fount and heater separately. The disadvantage is that if the heater burns out or the fount develops a leak, you have to replace the whole thing. When the heater and fount are separate, you only need to replace the malfunctioning unit.
Aquarium Heater (Not recommended): Aquarium heaters are also thermostatically controlled electric heaters made to be immersed in water. Bear in mind, though, that most aquarium fish need water temperatures that are in the 71-86 °F (22-30 °C) range, so that’s the temperature range aquarium heaters are designed to maintain. All of the other heating devices listed here keep the water just above freezing. Heating the water to aquarium warmth is an unnecessary waste of electricity.
If Your Coop Does Not Have Electricity
Keeping water free of ice in a coop with no connection to the electrical grid is a huge problem with few practical solutions. In the process of researching this article, I looked at a ton of stuff that’s been written on this topic and found a few good ideas as well as a lot of impractical suggestions plus some information that was simply wrong (floating ping pong balls or bottles of salt water in your water containers are at best a nice decorative touch—they don’t, unfortunately, do anything to prevent the water from freezing). Here they all are, starting with the best ideas, descending into the impractical and ending with the plain old whacko.
Solar Power: The Poultry Pages website contains a well-thought-out article on using solar power to run one of the electrical heating devices I listed in the first section of this post. The article suggests using a 100-watt solar panel. In addition, you’ll need an inverter to convert the DC power of the solar panel to the AC power required to run the heater.
Also, since the coldest part of the day occurs after the sun sets, when the solar panels aren’t making electricity, you’ll need batteries to store the generated power. Niftily, there is a device called a solar generator that combines a storage battery and an inverter into one unit. Solar generators are well-designed and you can plug the panels and the heater directly into them without needing a degree in electrical engineering.
Here’s the downside: Regardless of what type of electrical heater you’re using, it takes a whole lot of power for it to generate heat. Assuming the heating device is 50-100 watts, when the sun is shining, most of the power being produced will be going toward heating the water and only a fraction will be recharging the batteries. During the night and on cloudy days, the batteries will become discharged fairly quickly. Fortunately, you can also recharge the generator batteries, as a last resort, by plugging them into a standard outlet, so then it would just be a matter (assuming your house is not off grid) of carrying the generator to the house and plugging it in.
While solar power is workable and practical solution, it is not inexpensive. A 100-watt solar panel will cost around $300. A solar power generator will run around $500. Before considering this option, you may want to do a cost analysis to find out the cost of running power to your coop.
Another solar solution uses passive solar energy and costs nothing—put your water in a sunny location. If it’s a really cold day, the water will eventually freeze, but it will take a lot longer if the water is soaking up energy from the sun.
Continuously Replenish Water: A really simple solution for keeping unfrozen water available for your birds is to change out the water as it freezes. The easiest way to accomplish this is to have two water containers; one in the coop and one thawing in your house. When temperatures are just a tad below freezing, you may only have to make and exchange a couple of times a day. As the temperature drops, you’ll be making more trips. The practicality of this solution for you depends on your availability and your willingness to be making constant trips to the coop with fresh water in really cold weather.
Some bad advice that you can find on the internet suggests that it is okay to change out water only once in the morning and once at night regardless of the temperature. I suggest that following that advice will result in your flock being without water a good portion of the day when the weather is frigidly cold. Chicken expert Gail Damerow writes that “since chickens don’t drink much at one time, they need to sip water often throughout the day.” Because that’s their normal pattern of water consumption they need water to be available constantly. Why not just let the flock get a little thirsty? Damerow asserts that “chickens can suffer kidney failure if they don’t drink enough because the water…freezes.”
I’ve also seen bad internet advice that says it’s fine for chickens to get their water by eating snow, which is, after all, frozen water. I suggest that expecting a chicken that is already cold to eat cold snow is cruel and a recipe for a sick flock. These birds are already working hard to maintain their body temperatures, and eating snow obliges them to work that much harder. Plus, cold chickens will eat a bare minimum of cold snow because it is cold and will become dehydrated. And dehydrated chickens will eat less, become malnourished, stressed and sick.
Nonconductive/Insulated Containers: Water containers lose heat to the surrounding cold air in every direction. Heat dissipates off the top of the water, but also from the sides of the container. By using containers made of material that conducts heat poorly you will slow the rate of heat dissipation. Plastic or rubber containers will hold heat longer than metal containers. You can also insulate the container. One suggestion I’ve seen is to fill an old tire with pine shavings or straw and nestle the water container within. Or you can buy insulated buckets and founts. Insulation slows the rate of heat loss, but the water will eventually freeze. Nevertheless, if you’re keeping water available by replacing frozen water with fresh, insulation could reduce the number of trips you have to make each day.
Thermal Mass: My childhood cow water tank didn’t freeze right away because the tank contained lots of water and all that water lost its heat more slowly than the surrounding air. “Thermosink” is a commercial watering system that uses the thermal mass of large amounts of water as well as the earth itself to keep water unfrozen in cold climates. Each system contains an 8.5-foot-long insulated tank that is buried with only 20 inches protruding above the ground. The system works without electricity and has been shown to work as far north as the Yukon. Unless you’re willing to lay out the approximately $1500 this system costs and then hire a backhoe to bury it in your backyard, this is probably not the system for you. But keep the principle of thermal mass in mind when you’re shopping for water containers and remember that the insulated 5-gallon water fount will not freeze as fast as the 2-gallon model.
Chemical Hand Warmers (Questionable Practicality): This idea is to put a couple disposable hand warmers under a pet bowl containing a small amount of water. Hand warmers don’t generate a ton of heat, so this would only work with a small amount of water. Also, after a few hours the hand warmers wear out and have to be replaced. Hand warmers create heat by chemical reaction; they contain iron powder, water, and salt. When you open the packet and expose the chemicals to air, oxygen combines with the iron to make iron oxide and in the process generates heat. You can buy handwarmers in outdoor sports stores and they sell for less than a dollar each. I’ve never tried using handwarmers. It just doesn’t strike me as a practical solution. If you try this out, please let me know how it worked for you!
Water Agitation/Ping Pong Balls (Scientifically valid, but the way it’s applied here, not so much): You’ve probably noticed streams flowing freely with no ice on their surfaces while nearby lakes are completely covered with a sheet of ice. Ice forms at the surface of a lake because it is in contact with the frigid air and reaches freezing point before water deep within the lake. Because ice is less dense than water, once the surface has frozen, the ice stays above the water and actually provides an insulative layer which prevents the lake from freezing solid.
Streams don’t freeze because their water is turbulent and the cold surface is constantly mixing with the warmer water below. Thus, the agitated water in streams doesn’t form ice until the entire depth reaches the freezing point. But it certainly can and will freeze. When constantly mixing water does eventually freeze it forms a special ice called “frazil ice” that forms not just at the surface, but throughout the water. Here’s a visual example: Super-large, super-turbulent Niagara Falls frozen solid.
Frozen Niagara Falls in 1911 - Unknown author - Flickr. Uploaded 27 November 2009 - dailymail.co.uk, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16082784
How is this concept of lake and stream ice of any practical value to keeping your chicken water unfrozen? Just like lakes, the water in your coop freezes first where it is coldest—at the exposed surface and sides of the container. Once a thick skin of ice has formed on top, the water under the ice is unavailable for your flock to drink. But if you could somehow keep the water moving around it wouldn’t freeze until the entire container reached the freezing point.
How do you accomplish that? Electrical pumps would work but our premise is that there’s no electricity in the coop. There may be a little water movement when the chickens drink, but we know that chickens drink water daintily—there’s just not much stirring action. Soooo…..then there are ducks. Put a couple ducks in the coop and daintiness goes out the window. Just like the water goes out of the container. And the litter and miscellaneous scum from the coop floor goes into the water. The water gets mixed but is this the solution you’re looking for? Perhaps not.
Practically everybody who has written on the subject of frozen water in the coop eventually gets around to talking about floating a ping-pong ball or two on the water surface. How does this supposedly work to keep the water from freezing? Some say the ping pong ball agitates the water as the wind blows it across the surface. Others talk about the chickens pecking at the balls causing them to move. I suggest that the amount of water agitation provided by a few ping-pong balls is minimal and would be limited to the very surface of the water. End result: frozen water and very cold ping-pong balls.
I was actually surprised by the sheer number of people earnestly claiming that ping-pong balls would do the trick. I did notice, though, the similarity of language used in many of the articles. Are some writers borrowing the idea from other writers with the assumption that if it was written down it had to be true? Interestingly, of the 15 articles touting ping-pong balls, only three writers indicated that they had actually tried them. And none of those three actually said that they’d prevented or slowed ice formation in their chicken water. And I found no mention of a controlled experiment.
On the other hand, I’m being pretty earnest about ping-pong balls not working. Where’s my controlled experiment? Oh. Well. It’s right here.
Saltwater (Don’t Try This at Home): Saltwater has to get really cold to freeze. That’s why the oceans stay liquid at a colder temperature than bodies of fresh water. And it’s also why highway departments sprinkle salt on road surfaces in the winter to melt ice. Scientists measure how much salt is dissolved in water in “practical salinity units—psu’s.” The formula is that for each increase of 5 psu’s the freezing point of water decreases by a half a degree Fahrenheit. So, toss a bunch of salt in your water and it won’t freeze until it gets really, really cold. It will also make the water unpalatable and unhealthy for your flock. DO NOT DO THIS!
Saltwater in a Bottle (This Does Not Work): I can kind of imagine how somebody came up with this idea. Saltwater doesn’t freeze but it’s bad for your chickens. So, salt some water, put it in a bottle, then put that sealed bottle of saltwater in your chicken water. Problem solved! Only there’s a huge logical fallacy with this idea. The water in the bottle contains salt and won’t freeze. The water your chickens drink contains no salt, thus will freeze. That’s it. This idea doesn’t work. That hasn’t stopped a bazillion people from touting it as a practical solution. For the most part they’re the same people who like the ping pong ball idea.
Explanations vary as to why it’s supposed to work. Most discussions are vague and talk about “moving energy.” For instance, “[the saltwater] is pulling energy through the fresh water and therefore slowing the freezing.” And, “the bottle of salt water has a lower freezing point so heat flows from it into the fresh water, keeping it in a liquid state longer.” In fact, energy, in the form of heat, is being “pulled” out of the water by the colder air. But the saltwater in the bottle and the drinking water will always be at the same temperature, so there is no heat transfer between them at all! And when the temperature in the saltwater and drinking water dips below the freezing point, the saltwater will remain liquid, but the drinking water will freeze. It’s thermodynamics.
There are a few writers who offer a different explanation why the drinking water will supposedly not freeze; “[the] salt water bottle moves in the fresh water because of wind/air currents, mini waves caused by chickens dunking their beaks into the bucket, and natural movements in the earth around it – and moving water is less likely to freeze.” In other words, we’re back to the water agitation idea. I’ve already conceded that moving water freezes more slowly than still water. So, if we’re going with the idea that the bottle full of saltwater prevents the drinking water from freezing because it’s a floating object and not because it contains salt, then it will work as well as the ping pong balls—which is to say it really won’t work at all.
And so….
How do you keep your chicken’s water from becoming ice? Don’t let it freeze. You can do that by heating the water using electricity if you have it. If your coop is off-grid, you can heat using solar energy either passively or by converting it to electricity with solar panels. Or you can heat chemically (and impractically) with handwarmers. And you can slow its steady transformation to ice by insulating, and by providing thermal mass with larger water containers. Otherwise, you just need to keep hauling fresh water as the coop water freezes. And in a nutshell, that’s it. Are there other ways? Probably. If you come up with something good, please let me know.
