This was posted today by Nutrena and we wanted to share! Rain Barrels For The Chicken Coop

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The photo shows our Moby 65 gallon rain barrel and an Ivy 50 gallon rain barrel linked together and some of our chickens!

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http://scoopfromthecoop.nutrenaworld.com/rain-barrels-for-the-chicken-coop/

Many backyard chicken coops share an annoying problem. They’re located a distance from a water source. Hauling buckets of heavy water from the house to the chickens is time consuming work. Plus, water costs money, whether you buy water from a municipality or pay for electricity to run a pump.

There’s a simple solution.  Rain barrels harvest and hold the water that nature provides for free.     A single rain barrel typically holds enough water to fill a five gallon chicken waterer upwards of a dozen times. Even droughts produce occasional showers and most people are astonished to learn how quickly a light rain falling on a small roof fills the barrel.

For example a half-inch rain falling on the 250-square-foot roof of a modest sized chicken coop harvests 78 gallons of water – more than most rain barrels hold. That water is clean, fresh, and free.

 

 According to Lynn Ruck, owner of Rain Barrel Solutions in Apex, North Carolina, water coming off metal or asphalt roofs is safe for small animals to drink.  Only water coming from wooden roofs treated with preservatives shouldn’t be given to animals. Rain barrel water is also ideal for irrigating garden plants.

Position your rain barrel just outside the coop where the most water comes off the roof or under a downspout. This puts water only a few feet from where the hens need it. Remember that a gallon of water weighs 8 pounds, so a filled rain barrel will weigh up to 400 pounds. Be certain it is secure and sits on a flat, level surface. Positioning it on a few cinder blocks makes it easier to draw water out of the tap at the base.

Dozens of rain barrels are on the market or they can be made at home. Good rain barrels are made of opaque material that keeps water dark to prevent algae growth and have a secure lid to keep animals or children from falling in. The lid has holes covered with mosquito netting to allow water to enter from gutter downspouts but prevent entry by insects and debris. A hose tap near the bottom makes it easy to fill buckets or attach a hose.

Air conditioner condensation is a great source of water on these hot muggy days. Think about it: we are using a lot of energy to generate cool air and the by-product is pure water, literally pulled from the air. And what do we do with this pure water? We let it run down the drain. Here in the muggy southeast humidity can be very high so in order to cool the air the moisture must be taken from the air by condensing it.

 

At our shop in Raleigh our AC unit is on the roof and I went up there on a hot day in early June. The AC unit was buzzing along and water poured out a small pipe and meandered across the roof to a drain. I was curious to find out if it was worth saving.

   

We set up a simple catch basin and ran a pipe to the edge of the building then set up a Moby rain barrel to hold our water. We have a small garden at the shop and up until this point we had been bringing rainwater from home to keep the garden growing.

   

We now have more water than we need for our small garden. Lynn set up a solar pump on the barrel to facilitate getting water to where we needed it. We are even using the excess water to keep the grass green along Atlantic Avenue. The next step is to set up a gravity fed drip irrigation system that will work as the barrel overflows.