Different bird species use different methods to drink water. Chicken have to use gravity to get water to flow down the esophagus, so as a consequence, they have to scoop the water up in their beak, then tip their head back to allow to gravity to take effect. This is very different to say, pigeons which suck water up using negative pressure, much same way you and I would use a straw. Adult chickens will drink between 150 and 200 millilitres of water per day. But that of course, will depend on the ambient temperature, and they will drink more if it's warmer. Chicks may need assistance in the first few days of life to find water. When you bring chicks into your farm, or small holding, what we tend to do here is dip their beaks into the water source to help them find that water. Chickens that are reared on one type of drinker type, and then moved to housing with a new type of drinker type may also need assistance finding water. If you're introducing chickens to an established flock, usually the old birds will kind of teach the new birds how to find water, because they're drinking from your water source all the time. But if you're bringing in entirely new stock, then keep a careful eye on water consumption to ensure that your birds have found the water source. Typically, chickens will spend longer drinking from a nipple style of drinker. So, about 6% of their daily time budget, as oppose to bell drinkers like we have here. That only takes about 2 to 3% of their time budget to ingest the same amount of water. That's because flow rate is limited in a nipple system. The type of drinking system that you choose depends partly on your needs, but also what your poultry sheds are like. So, for example, do you have plumbed-in water to your poultry shed? That will affect the kind of drinker system you choose, but also, how much automation do you need? If you have a very large flock, you might want a water system that automatically fills to save you time. Different drinker types are also used for different types of chicken production. So, for example, broiler chickens like these guys behind me, are typically reared with nipple drinkers, and the nipple line is raised gradually as the chickens grow. Hens on the other hand might be reared with nipple lines, or with bell drinkers, and they do equally well, on either. One of the drawbacks to bell drinkers though, is that there is more opportunities for birds to knock them, and thus spill water onto the litter, which can make your litter wetter, and dirtier. Drinking behavior is closely associated with feeding behavior in time across the course of the day. But the amount of water drunk is also closely associated with the amount of feed eaten by birds. So, birds will drink about 1.6 to 2 times as much water, as food by weight in the course of a day. And this is partly affected by the type of drinker that you give them. So, typically, the ratio of water to food is lower with nipple drinkers. The effect of nipple drinkers also affects how wet the fecal droppings are from birds, and so typically, droppings will be drier from birds that are using nipple drinkers, as opposed to bell drinkers. Yep.