Poultry Keepers Podcast

Poultry Water Systems-Part 2

• Jeff Mattocks and Carey Blackmon • Season 3 • Episode 139

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In this follow-up episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast, poultry experts Jeff Mattocks and Carey Blackmon dive deep into the details of building and maintaining reliable poultry water systems for every season.

Learn how to design a system that keeps your flock’s water clean, cool, and flowing — even in freezing winter temperatures or summer heat waves. Discover the pros and cons of nipple and cup systems, how to reduce water pressure safely, and practical DIY tricks for heat and freeze protection that actually work.

You’ll also get hands-on insights from real setups:

  • How to size pumps and manage water pressure correctly.
  • Cup and nipple system pros, cons, and maintenance tips.
  • Gravity flow vs. recirculating setups — which is best for your flock?
  • Winter freeze protection using heat lamps, pipe heaters, and low-voltage systems.
  • How poor water access stops hens from laying — and what to do about it.

Whether you raise backyard layers, breeders, or show birds, this episode is packed with real-world advice from trusted experts who’ve built systems that last.

Listen now: www.thepoultrykeeperspodcast.com
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Alex:

Welcome to the Poultry Keepers Podcast, we're happy that you joined us. In this episode Jeff Mattocks and Carey Blackmon finish their conversation about poultry water systems. So, we'll just turn things over to them and they can get right to it.

Carey Blackmon:

This is a part of my nipple line that I, or no, part of my cup line that I have in some of my individual pins. I've got I don't even know how many of those I have. I have a lot, but I run half inch PVC along the back of'em'cause they're in a straight line. On this group, they're on the back because the sun is on the front side of the pen. On another one, they're on the front side because the sun's on the backside. I did that just to, keep the line out of the sun as much as possible. Try to keep the temperature down. But they love it. The water flows through, these cutoff valves that you see on the other side. I have those things everywhere. Lots of them. The ones that I purchased were, they're designed for rabbit stuff because of the size tube that I'm using. It all puts, goes right on there. I'm using a 800 gallon per hour pump, which is a bit much a 600 wheel work. The smaller system that I'm gonna be putting together in the next couple of weeks for the other side of my yard, I'm gonna use a 600 pump. But the key on it is to make sure you've got at least five or six foot of rise, and that's one of the things in the pump that it has in the specs, because if the water won't go uphill, you're gonna wind up with problems. But, so that's how that is. And here you can see where in the edge of the drum I cut a notch out. That is a power cable that goes down for the pump, and that's water coming in. And you can see the tube feeding the line coming from the pump in the bottom. And that's what it looks like. Look, looking down the green blurb is the pump, the float valve that I have in the drum because I like to automate as much as possible with water. Birds run outta water. You're gonna have a problem really quick. They run outta food, they'll live for a day or two. Depending on the population of your pen, you, they, that'll be how long they can go before they start pecking at each other. That is what it is. The Renta co brand or type float valve is probably one of the better ones that I found. I did not try to use a toilet bowl style float valve. I know a lot of people that have with great success back here. You can see where the waterline comes in. I've got a freeze miser that's to keep my hose pipe from freezing on a y connector going into it. Let's see here if we have any questions. Oh, yeah, cups got, cups do get really dirty. Especially those big ones. And with the ones that have the yellow piece in the middle. They're probably not an inch, maybe an inch and a quarter at most at the opening. And I thought some of my large comb birds and my Rhode Island reds and my American breasts might have problems. Nope, no issues. So that worked out really good. They do like the nipples. Rob likes'em. They're not much to break. That's true from China. They're like 40. Yeah. Yeah. They're, the nipples are not bad at all. If you order'em from China, even if you order a couple hundred of them, the shipping will be about as much as the nipples themselves. They're still not that expensive. Yeah. The cups, they break. Standard says Hello, Jeff. Let's see the high heat strategy again. Shade your wattles, keep'em outta direct sunlight. You know when you look at your birds at two o'clock in the afternoon and you see where they are, that's where your water should be because. Two, three, that's when it's gonna be the hottest. And they're gonna be in the shade. If their water's not there, they're not gonna drink it. If you, if I'm really hot and I'm outside working and I sit down in the shade to take a break, I'm not gonna walk 50 feet to go get hot water. Not doing it. They won't either. Flusher lines midday in the when it's hot, at the very end of my line, I actually have a tube put there and a wide adapter with a ball valve on it, and I can cut it off from going back to the tank and just shoot it out, down the. Heal. I did that so I could let you know if it got hot, I could let the hot water out. I also have, my plan is to raise the drum up about four feet off the ground, and I'm going to put a valve in the bottom, like not the very bottom, about two inches off the floor that way. I can put a wide adapter in the line that feeds it, and if I lose power, my battery backup dies, my pump stops circulating. Gravity will take water to the cups and the nipples that's there, and also I'll be able to dump that thing before I let it fill up and put ice in it during the summertime. Okay. Anything else you can think of for a high heat strategy, Jeff?

Jeff Mattocks:

No, just try to keep it cool as best you can.

Carey Blackmon:

Let's see. Rob says, don't make the holes too big for the nipples. He's probably talking about when you drill the holes out, that is key. You want to almost force the edge of the nipple in there and start screwing it. And let the teeth bite and pullet on in plumber's tape works and gorilla Glue works too. The downside to the Go Gorilla Glue is you can't really,

Jeff Mattocks:

it's once swap it out, you're not out again. I'm pretty sure he was responding to Sue's where she talked about him drip around the connection. And I was just curious what Sue's pressure is, right? Like you learned the hard way on your first runup, okay? Yeah. When you, whenever you set up nipples and even cups, right? You don't, you need a pressure reducer. Oh yeah. You,

Carey Blackmon:

you don't want to feed that straight from a hose pipe,

Jeff Mattocks:

right? And, but, well-known is well-known fact that if when using a nipple if water sprays out of it or shoots out of it with pressure birds will not drink from it effectively, right? They're afraid of it, right? Because they're getting shot in the eye every time they reach up there for a drink. So you've gotta get your pressure down. Actually nipples work really good on a gravity flow. If you wanna, if you have your reservoir up high enough, there's enough pressure just from gravity flow.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah. I wanna say the thing that I saw said six, six pounds was about the sweet spot.

Jeff Mattocks:

And depending on now, that's for a commercial house with a like a hundred or 200 foot line. Okay. And they're anticipating birds working the nipples on a constant basis in a smaller setup. I would tell you that six PSI is your high spot.

Speaker 3:

Yeah,

Jeff Mattocks:

I would wanna see you down closer to four. Four, and then maybe five, but not, it's not a lot of, you do not want a lot of head pressure. If, you're counting on nipples and I get why Rob and you and a lot of people use the nipples. But our friend north of you Charlie Rich He did the study side by side with pen of nipples and a pen of bell wattles. And now this was Cornish cross broilers, right? Out in his field pens doing pasture poultry, but. His water consumption on the nipples was less than with the bell wattles. And and they were slower growing, right? So they did not consume as much water from a nipple as they do from something where there's a large volume of water where they can easily dip their beacon and go just stay in that, so people know.

Carey Blackmon:

Hold that thought real quick.

Jeff Mattocks:

We'll

Carey Blackmon:

be right.

Speaker 4:

We would like to take a short break to express our appreciation to the Fertrell Company for their sponsorship of the Poultry Keepers 360 Live programming. Fertrell has been a trusted name of sustainable farming and poultry nutrition for decades, and their commitment to providing high quality natural product aligned perfectly with the values we hold there in our poultry community. Thank you Fertrell for partnering with us to empower poultry keepers everywhere. We're truly grateful for your dedication and support.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah. I like Bell Wattles. I really do. And in the wintertime here, the, I have problems with the rain around it freezing. But I could hit that with my knife a couple times and pop it out. I'm curious though, if. The bell wattles if the hose will freeze while in the wintertime on a system that's flowing,

Jeff Mattocks:

it will it depends on how long the feed line is from your supply line. But that really thin spaghetti tubing that feeds a bell water. That quarter inch spaghetti tubing is it's gonna freeze. It freezes easy, right? Yeah. Once you get below freezing for an hour or so, you, it's not gonna hold it, it, they're nice'cause they don't burst, right?'cause they're not a rigid, but they're gonna freeze. That's, unfortunately, that's just the way it's gonna roll

Carey Blackmon:

I thought about in the,'cause I've built some rather large pens this summer for projects that I'm planning on coming out with, and I'm thinking about putting a bell of water in there too, just for that purpose.'cause they'll drink more and grow better. I got like 16 of them once or more.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah, I, I like large volume water, right? Trough water. My biggest concern is that the birds without water. So I'd rather have'em have access to some dirty water with maybe a little algae or, biofilm or something growing in it. Than to not have any water at all. Yeah. And we're here, we are, we're coming in the winter season, and I guarantee by New Year's I will have at least two calls, if not more, if my laying hands quit laying and. I'm gonna say they, they all quit laying right. I went from this production down to zero, and then, I have to tell someone your wattles froze up and they didn't have access to water. No, that ain't it. It's gotta be the feed. It's gotta be the feed. It's always the feed. It's always the feed. I said, look. If you lost massive, if you lost a large amount of production in a 24 hour period or even a two day period, I said it was restriction from water. They were unable to drink. I said, you don't have to believe me. I don't really care. But that's the truth of it. They didn't have water. Okay.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah. Only could get you a bunch of two gallon buckets. There's only two. Fill'em up with water and just set'em all over the place and see what happens.

Jeff Mattocks:

There's only two or three reasons that you know, a hen will stop laying abruptly, right? One is the water, two is dead. Predator her right, or three, A predator scared the crap out of her so bad that she's afraid to layer it.

Speaker 3:

Okay.

Jeff Mattocks:

Those are the top three reasons why for no reason at all. And Mike quit laying right. There's a reason, but anyway.

Carey Blackmon:

Not typically. Yeah. Them they're faithful freeze protection for the wintertime. Heated bases, aquarium heaters, insulate the lines. If you're gonna do something like that. Vertical nipples are less freeze prone. Also if you're using five gallon buckets, I have seen putting a jar of honey inside of it. Honey freezes at a lot lower temperature than water. And I don't mean dump the honey in there. I mean put the whole jar in there right by where the water comes out. I tried that last year. It worked. Again, it's only cold here for a couple weeks, but it worked. Another thing that I've seen is not a LED or in, or Fluorescent, but just a regular standard 25 wat light bulb or a 40 watt sitting inside of a concrete block, like in one of the holes. And put your water on top of that. The low heat will keep it from freezing. With that, anytime you involve power and water, make sure you've got A-G-S-C-I something outdoor rated. cause we don't want your chickens to get electrocuted.

Jeff Mattocks:

You're no

Carey Blackmon:

fun.

Jeff Mattocks:

Come on. I made one of those. I made a wooden box right outta one bite. Yeah. And I made it one by

Carey Blackmon:

eight

Jeff Mattocks:

would be the perfect height, right? So I made one by eight and I made it. So I had the octagon, the red base white, top, tractor supply, typical plastic, water. And I had three gallon, or three and a half gallon. But I built a box. So it was built precisely so the edges of the water would sit on it. And I got some of the cell text foam board with the, shiny side. And I lined the box. I put a regular old light socket in there now further north than you. So I ran a 60 watt bulb.

Speaker 3:

All winter. Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

Incandescent, 60 watt bulb. I didn't know about gcis at that point, so I wasn't worried about it. Long cord weather resistant. And I loved it because at night, right when I'm getting ready to go to bed, I could look out, it's a little glow. I could see that pink glow. From my bedroom and I knew. That they would have water in the morning. It would take longer than that to freeze it.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah. You didn't have to get up until after the sun came out and go outside.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. And that worked great for me for several years and just simple. Yeah. And I cut a piece of plywood for a bottom. So it was all enclosed.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

Downside is when you lift the water off of there. Okay. If any water hits that incandescent bulb, you're replacing the bulb. Okay.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

Gone.

Carey Blackmon:

Yep. But

Speaker 3:

yeah,

Jeff Mattocks:

and

Carey Blackmon:

if you do that, you can unplug it, stick a potato in and unscrew the metal piece.

Jeff Mattocks:

Again, I didn't know that hack, so you know, I just grabbed a pair of needle nose pliers and got it out of there. That works too, and I'd go through four or five bulbs in a winter, just. It was a thing. But if we hit the, like occasionally we'll get down close to zero for maybe a week. Yeah, a week or two I would run a hundred wat bulb. I could go out there in the morning, I can go out there in the morning, I can stick my finger in that water, and it was warm to the touch. So my hands were drinking,

Carey Blackmon:

oh yeah, they were loving it. That was like they

Jeff Mattocks:

were loving it. Yeah,

Carey Blackmon:

that was like hot chocolate.

Jeff Mattocks:

Exactly. It was

Carey Blackmon:

cold out,

Jeff Mattocks:

right?

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah, so I'm looking forward to that. Rob said he uses the pipe heater, the like heat strips zip tied to the PVC pipe that the nipples come off of and that heats'em up. Should work anything. Yeah, anything simple like that works. Just, keep it where it's bearable. Here's where we talk about set the nipples height, it's chicken's beak level where they slightly stretch up level surfaces for the cups and the bells to prevent tilting or overflow. I have all of my bells hung up with the, they're designed for greenhouses. It's got a little carabiner on the top and on the bottom, and it's a pull string where it ratchet ratchets up and down so you can adjust the height. I use those and they work out really good. Low pressure regulators is definitely gonna be key. There's, like what I'm doing. I've got the pump and running through the system. I got the smallest pump I could find at the time that had. Over five or six feet of lift. With that, I would say also if you're gonna feed it with a hose pipe, then you can look at systems for drip irrigation. There's a reducer that you can get. It only go takes it down to 25 pounds, which is still a lot, but. It won't make your stuff leak 40, 50 pounds, 60 pounds, whatever you got. So you could do that. But ideally gravity works great. If you're just gonna have it, put your container four feet up off the ground, and that should be,

Jeff Mattocks:

but you can't do your recirculation, the gravity's all fine depending on where you live, but the recirculation system that you're working on.'Cause you can now heat it in the winter. Yeah. You have one heater. And you could put any stock tank heater in there that you wanted to. Yep. And, or you can put huge ice chunks in it in summertime. Yep. And not have to worry about it. But,

Carey Blackmon:

and that's, see that's a key thing. We've actually, there's a lot of people in my house and we've talked about getting a commercial ice machine, a small one because my wife found a refrigerator that she absolutely loves. It's got plenty of room in both sides, but the ice maker in it absolutely sucks. It's horrible. We've looked at that and I'm like, shoot, if I get one of those, I can just get a couple five gallon buckets of ice and it'll be back in a couple hours. Let's see what else we got. Sanitation checks. You're gonna want to visually check your water in any kind of reservoir system to make sure it's clean, make sure it's good, descale it. Run some vinegar through there. Bleach. I like vinegar or bleach because with vinegar doesn't leave behind a residue and it also cleans and sanitizes really well. Bleach does too. Bleach will off gas in less than 24 hours and be safe. If it's summertime, it'll actually off gas in less than 12, that works good too. Let's see here. Joy says in cooler temps, if I use a three gallon trough ring water, how often should I completely change the water out? I would say if it freezes.

Jeff Mattocks:

Three gallons should, she's got nine or 10 chickens, so they should empty it on their own about every five days.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it

Jeff Mattocks:

doesn't let light into it. I don't know that you need to do a complete clean out on it. Probably not. We do, I would say once a week, once a week or once every two weeks, do the clean out. Where you're cleaning it out and doing something of a sanitation point, but should be able to, yeah. What? Keep showing it up.

Carey Blackmon:

Wash it on the weekends or something

Jeff Mattocks:

when

Carey Blackmon:

you're off.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah, she's up to 17. You know my number, my math is way off. Yeah. Let's see. 17 times eight. 136. That's a gallon a day. It's only gonna last three days. Yeah,

Carey Blackmon:

she probably gonna be filling it up every two.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. Winter's coming, so she might get three out of it, but

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah. And it is heated, so they'll drink more because of that. Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

So she's gonna fill it every two days, two and a half days.

Carey Blackmon:

Oh. If you have wet litter, you got a leak and a cup or a nipple. Tilt it, replace it, check it out. Might just need to be cleaned. Sometimes with some of the cups, you can get some crap back in the spring. Mechanism I've shot'em with hose pipes and fixed'em, so anything like that. If your birds aren't drinking, check the height. It could be too high, too low. Prime the nipples. Tap the nipples. If you get any kinda water in, any kind of air in the line, it can cause it to stop. It's aggravating, but sit there and tap it. That's actually what I did to get mine to use it. And, while I'm sitting here priming the darn thing, some came over there and they were like, Hey, what is that? What it was a couple of my turkeys. They're like, what are you doing? Get away from me. I'm busy. And I just kept doing this. And, they wouldn't go away. They started pecking at it too. And my turkeys have noticeably grown in the past month because I feel like they're drinking a ridiculous amount of water because they will sit and play with the thing for minutes at a time.

Jeff Mattocks:

Turkeys love moving water, so if they can hear it moving through the pipe, it's gonna draw'em over. They probably can hear things we can't hear. I know Turkey's hearing for sure is way more sensitive than a human's hearing.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

But

Carey Blackmon:

that's cool. They, I don't know, turkeys, I've had'em for a couple years now. I really like them. They're very inquisitive. They're fun to watch, fun to hang out with. If you're in a hurry in their run, trying to fix something that's not fun. They get on your nerves. But it's still funny. I, and we've already talked about chicks, using nipples. Make sure you get the right kind. Rob uses. I'm probably not the same ones for his adults as he does for the chicks, although I will say his pan idea with the hardware cloth on top of it. So you know, water can dribble down into that and it doesn't mess up the bedding. That's a great idea. Let's see. Joy says, just so I don't have to add more water every so many days, water temps. Are more harder on us than chickens or winter. Yeah. Winter temps are a lot harder on us than they are on the chickens.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. She has three of the heated wattles.

Carey Blackmon:

So Rob uses the same nipples for all the birds.

Jeff Mattocks:

So he is probably has the broiler nipples. The layers just work'em a little bit harder. You can do that if you get the right one. You can make it work right now.

Carey Blackmon:

I think that's what those red ones are.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. A lot of times the chick nipples are usually yellow because they'll beck it yellow a little bit quicker. But you can use, yeah, like those red ones that you have on the screen right now are pretty, pretty much standard. They're the common that you see everywhere. People getting all excited about the horizontal nipples. Now, I don't know, jury's out for me, but they're all right. I guess

Carey Blackmon:

I don't like'em because they make more of a mess. If you have this and the bird reaches up for it, waterfalls right down their throat. Less than on the ground.

Jeff Mattocks:

Often though, when I'm visiting poultry farms of all sizes and scale one of the common flaws that I see is the nipple lines are not up high enough.'cause you literally, I hate to see a bird turn its head sideways to drink. To hit the nipple. Yeah. So it, you really want it to just rock forward on its toes and have to stretch to hit the nipple. But if you have mixed flocks with different sized birds, it's really hard to get the nipple setting

Carey Blackmon:

that's my, like Rob uses the ones like the red one here for all of his, and the thing that I like about those. That I don't like about the Turkey ones is with those, they're molded together, so the piece that goes inside the water can't pop out and go flying down your waterline. I have in the run that does not have turkeys, that I have one of these in. I actually have it at an angle. So the smaller birds can get on one end and the taller birds will get on the other. Now, so far, the taller ones have not got on the lower end and caused any problems, but,

Jeff Mattocks:

They don't really want to turn their head sideways to drink what I'm saying, but I've, I've visited too many poultry farms where, it happens. One of the suggestions is you gotta get your water lines up. That's a common thing, or whether it's bells, nipples, whatever. Proper height is key. Proper height is huge. If you're tired of changing bedding and cleaning out and all that other stuff, feeder and water height is huge. Yeah,

Carey Blackmon:

it is. If they. For me, it was hard because I was like, I don't want my birds to have to struggle. But when you set it to where they almost have to reach for it. Yep. They don't put a lot of crap in it, and they still drink a lot.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah.

Carey Blackmon:

Does anybody have any questions? All right. With that I, we had a great show.

Alex:

Thank you for joining us for another Poultry Keepers Podcast Episode. We'll be here next Tuesday with a new episode and topic. We hope you'll join us then. Until then, keep learning, keep improving and keep enjoying the birds you love.

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