Fantastic thread. Faaantastic. I have been looking around various aviaries in the hope of finding how others do it, and everyone has open dishes like me for water. I think its horrible and I have been trying to think of how else to do it, be very interested to hear an update.

Not a pain at all GB.

 

Water usage appears to be approx 3-4L per day. Obviously not all of this is consumed by the budgies. I empty "slops" water from drips and obtain around 4-5L every few days to a week but it does allow me to be able to run most medications quite easily. For products such as cocci vet, ronnivet or others that are better run as a few days treatment I first empty the system fully of water. Then add around 8L mixed medication to the cistern and drain air until product runs through. I leave the mains water turned off and add 4L daily so can be reasonably confident of high enough turn over of product. The initial 8L is for line fill so there is one day lag for product to flow along the lines. That's about the only real issue I have with this system - due to the line length you need reaonable fill initially so that the cistern does not completely drain over the day but is ALMOST completely used. It took a bit of fiddling to work it out properly.

 

The only thing I don't use the auto drinkers with is psitacosis treatment (psitavet) as using the autodrinkers means mixing up way more than actually needed and potentially wasting alot. The cost and the difficulty of obtaining pstiavet makes me a bit more reserved with using this treatment through the drinkers. So for this I turn the whole system off, completely drain it and place one little bowl drinker in each flight which then gets changed daily. In that manner I then only need to use around 2L per day.

 

The biggest issue I have had with this system is the dripping. Even though I was told that these drinkers don't drip - they DO! So initially I constructed a wire mesh top over stainless bowls (original drinking bowls) to catch the drips whilst revent the birds from accessing smelly poo-ie water. They worked fine BUT I work away a lot and have a very uninspired bird carer (not that I'm complaining mind you - not really) of a husband who didn't like emptying out the bowls so let them overflow (they were only little 10oz bowls), which kind of defeated the purpose of having bowls to catch the drips anyway!!!! So after some thinking and negotiation we came up with a system of 1L plastic jugs (free from work ) with a floor drain to stop birdie access. Now my hubby is exempt from emptying the pooie slops water (which he is happy about) and the aviary stays dry and free of pooie slops water (which I am very happy about).

 

I'm just going to scurry off to get a picture or two!

 

So here we have nipple drinker with our "slops" bucket arrangement underneath. Leaving the nipples to drip defeated the purpose of having a clean water source in the first place and the little bowls we initially used we okay but for the reasons outlined above we came up with something better. As you can see 1L plastic jugs with floor drains from Bunnings which just sit in the top. No adjustments of the jug or the floor drain were needed and this keeps the budgies and the "slops" water nicely apart! To fix to the wire we just cut PVC pipe in collars and fixed them to the wire with 2x cable ties. All quite cheap and easy to do. Also easy to clean and easy to replace if need be.

 

 

 

Edited June 29, 201014 yr by nubbly5

thank you darl very much

i think with my flight and less birds than you it would be less for overall costs and with my memorry loss very worth my while

so will be finding out more about it around here

Oh one other thing. If you do go ahead with this I would ensure that when you put in the pipes you angle it just a bit past vertical (towards the flight area) so that dripping is easier to catch. Too vertical or angled closer to the wire means that drips fall down close to the wire and are harder to catch. Hope that makes sense! Once the glue goes off you either have to live with it or recut pvc to adjust!

Edited June 29, 201014 yr by nubbly5

Oh one other thing. If you do go ahead with this I would ensure that when you put in the pipes you angle it just a bit past vertical (towards the flight area) so that dripping is easier to catch. Too vertical or angled closer to the wire means that drips fall down close to the wire and are harder to catch. Hope that makes sense! Once the glue goes off you either have to live with it or recut pvc to adjust!

cool will do

hay on a personal note did you get my e mail lastnight ???

You can also use the low flow nipple drinkers on soft drink bottles.

You can also use the low flow nipple drinkers on soft drink bottles.

probbly better for small breeder like me rip where would i find these ???

You can also use the low flow nipple drinkers on soft drink bottles.

probbly better for small breeder like me rip where would i find these ???

 

You can get the same nipple drinkers that nubbly has used. A breeder over here who I caught up with a few weeks ago uses them in soft drink bottles. He has done this for ages.

 

There is a company called Bellsouth who deal in a lot of poultry equipment. Here is the link to there site.

 

http://www.bellsouth.com.au/webframe.html

 

Look under the equipment heading.

Edited June 30, 201014 yr by RIPbudgies