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Big Suction Waterer Feeds Water Out A Little At A Time
"My family travels a lot and since we live in a part of west Texas where it's 120 miles to the nearest town any direction you look, we have no one to feed or water our laying hens when we're gone. This trouble-free 25 gal. waterer keeps them watered for a month," says Bode Koehn, Earth, Tex., who developed a "suction waterer" that could be used to water any livestock.
Koehn mounted a 4-ft. long piece of 12 in. dia. PVC pipe on top of a wheel rim with a metal plate welded onto the top of it to create a watertight watering trough. There's about a 1-in. gap between the PVC pipe and the edge of the wheel rim and a narrow slit is cut up from the bottom of the PVC pipe up to about 1/4 in. below the level of the rim. The slit lets water out of the pipe. The top end of the PVC pipe is covered with a concave plow disc that's sealed to the PVC with a thick layer of silicone caulking. Two valves are fitted to the plow disc cover. One is a water intake valve and the other an air pressure release valve.
"To fill the waterer, I hook up a garden hose to the water intake valve and plug the water slit at the bottom of the PVC pipe. As it fills with water, air is forced out of the waterer through the air pressure relief valve. When water starts to come out of the air valve, you know the waterer is full. Then I close the water intake valve and pull the plug at the bottom of the waterer. Water will flow out of the waterer until the water level in the trough is up to the top of the slit in the PVC pipe and enough suction is created inside the waterer to stop the flow of water. When chickens drink water down below top of slit, air is let into the waterer and water flows out until it covers the slit again."
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Bode Koehn, P.O. Box 477, Earth Texas 79031 (ph 806 257-2245)


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1989 - Volume #13, Issue #6