Hog Waterer, DIY

We made an automatic pig waterer a month or so ago, ad we are LOVING it!!!

So I thought we would share the BRILLIANT idea that was passed on to us by another pig farmer.

Shall we start with the tools and supplies???

Things you will need:

55 gallon food grade barrel (plastic is best, only because if it were metal it would rust out pretty quickly)

Metal Pig Water nipple(I got mine at Fleet Farm)

55 gallon barrel coupler (I am pretty sure that mine was 3/4 inch, I found mine at Menards)

Plumbers Tape

(this may not be necessary but I wanted to do it right the first time)

Tools you will need:

Drill

Paddle Bit (mine was 1 1/4 inch)

2 pairs Channel Locks

(for tightening the coupler on the barrel)

Ok now we have everything, lets get started.

We laid the barrel on its side to make drilling easier.

You will want to measure hw high you will need the nipple to be, depending on how tall your breed of pigs happens to be.

We put ours at about 10 inches from the ground.

Hold the barrel steady and drill your hole at the desired height.

Once you are finished, you are ready to put the coupler in place.

It is Very important that you put the plastic washer and the rubber washer in the right order!!!

This part of the coupler goes on the outside of the barrel. Remeber, plastic on plastic, rubeer on barrel.

If you put them in the wrong order, it will be very hard to screw on, and it will not seal!!!

Anyway, once you have put the coupler through the hole, you will need to tighten the nut onto the inside. This can be tricky, so if you have a second set of hands it is very helpful.

You will want to tighten it snugly, but not too tight.

ALMOST DONE!

Take your plumbers tape, and wrap it around the screw end of the nipple once or twice.

Now you will need to screw the nipple into the coupler.

Make sure that it is right side up!

This is right side up!

Tadah!!!!

The you have it, your professional redneck pig waterer!

Ok, so my boar, Arnie, is pretty fond of knocking the waterer over. I don't know why, but it must be a boy thing to dump things out.... so after we had tried many things like, digging down into the ground, putting it in a corner, and tying it to the fence, we couldn't find anything that worked.

So after some more brainstorming, we decided to put a hot wire around it. Now don't get me wrong here, none of the girls of their cute babies have ever been zapped by this wire.

How is this you ask? Well we put the wire high enough to where if the pigglets or the girlies tried to drink from it they woul not touch the wire, but if that silly boar tried to knock it over her would hit his nose on the wire. I do have to say, he has not knocked it over once since then.

So if you have troubles, just brainstorm a little harder!

Or ask a farmer who has been there and done that!!!

(which wouldn't be me by the way! I am a newbie!)

Mr Froggie jumped on the hot wire, but luckily he didn't turn into roasted frog legs, because he wasn't grounded! PHEW! That was close!

I think he chose a safer spot later on!

Well I hope you found this post to be most informative!

I would love to hear from you!