As part of a quest to try and automate our chicken operation I decided to upgrade the drinking cup setup from the units I originally had in place for the car coop as well as move this same setup to include the regular coops.
The original drinker cups were small and not really able to handle the kind of traffic that was hitting up these old cups. Plus the things really weren't made to handle the type of pressures that were present on the water line, even with the regulator in place. They leaked constantly after a while. The worst problem was the idea that the chickens were too stupid to peck the little nipples in the drinker cups to cycle water into the cups. I wanted to find drinker cups that were like the very first ones that I tried. Those were the type where they were spring loaded. When empty they would spring up, opening a simple valve that would let water into the cup then as the cup filled up the weight would make the cup dip down, closing the valve. We ended up finding this type of cup but this time with the 1/8" NPT screw tip instead of the hose barbs that the other ones had. So of course we got a pack of them. First place I set up the new drinker cups was in the brooder section of the car coop. I just had to unscrew the old units and replace them with the new ones. Turning on the water yielded good results as the cups slowly filled with water then weighed themselves down to where they shut off. I was satisfied with em so I moved on to the main coop section. Moving on to the main coop I did the same thing, removing the old drinker cups then installing the new ones. Only when I turned on the water, after the cups filled they started leaking over. I ended up having to cut the PVC pipe and install a coupling then turn the section of pipe holding the drinker cups to position them at an angle that would allow them to be level when filled so they won't leak. After doing that, everything worked as designed. I had to work out a couple of bugs with the drinker cups to get them where they won't leak or otherwise cause problems since we can't have flooded chicken coops and grounds. Besides it will get expensive on the water bill if we have constant leaks at these stations. With the overall success of these drinker cups I will start building the things to set up the chicken coops to have water drinking cups as well. Ideally I'd want to have a gravity feed hopper for each coop where it slow fills the drinker cups via gravity. What this will do is take away the pressurized water lines that are prone to rupturing the drinker cups' valve seal. Plus it allows for the apparatus to operate in the absence of pressurized water. What I want to do is take these small float valves and attach them to the tops of the water hoppers and hook the pressurized water lines to those so they take water to fill up then slow feed it to the drinker cups. I'll see based on how well things do in the future. The next thing on the list is the spreading of even more gravel. After getting another truckload, this time I concentrated on the main driveway. I started spreading over a depression area where it was getting a little too wet and starting to mud up the cars as they went in and out over the area. Plus the rest of the driveway was getting a little more worse for wear. I started dumping the gravel over the worst areas then started just covering the ground over what would be considered the main driveway, or main car park area. As I completed the covering of the half of the main driveway where it was open I started putting gravel down around the Tracker as it was parked in the other spot. This was ok since my next load of gravel would be used to cover that area after moving the truck out of the way. In the meantime I wanted to get as much ground in this area covered. I even started putting gravel down up to the fence so help make things look even and neat. I decided that I wanted to continue the coverage of the main high traffic areas going across and through the main driveway so I can create areas that are plenty solid and nice enough to walk on. As I get these main high traffic areas covered I will then slowly expand out into the other areas that I wanted to get covered. Slowly but surely I will achieve total gravel coverage and not have to worry about cutting grass that much if at all.
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