The Hazards of Picking Up Chicks

[errantember]

So I've had my chickens for several months now, and overall it's been a fun and worthy adventure. They're goofy to watch, fun to chase (according to Loki) and produce an average of 3 eggs per day. They're not *quite* paying for themselves so far, but the food they consume in a week is roughly equal to the value of the eggs they produce, so they're not doing badly at all. I've been making piecemeal improvements to the coop generously donated by spottedvasa, including an automatic waterer made out of a toilet valve. One problem with this otherwise groovy system, however, is that it never drains, and therefore has become something of a mosquito factory.

Because the toilet valve is doing the slow-leak thing that older valves often do, I'm using kitty_smack's watering timer, borrowed probably years ago now, to feed it with water for only five minutes a day. The water slows down a lot when the toilet valve should be stopping, and this fills it right to the top without overflowing. It occurred to me that an easy solution to the mosquito problem, besides simply nuking the planet into a charred glowing husk hurtling through space, might be to put a drain on the bottom of the waterer with another timer. At whatever interval mosquito larva might be big enough to see what's coming, but still too small to hatch, it would activate and dump all the water out into the compost heap, a nearby tree, or perhaps Dick Cheney's gas tank.

So I went shopping to Home Depot for timers and hardware, only to discover that the timers in question are about $30 retail. I'm way too broke right now to pony up that kind of money just for a fancy chicken waterer, so I proceeded over to Ebay to find a used one. It might also be worth a post on Austin Freecycle. However, it *then* occurred to me that I already have a timer of sort...my sprinkler system. I haven't used it since I took my Permaculture Design Course years ago, but it's still there, and it still works. And, it has *timed* valves! And it was at that point that I realized there were entire *systems* of electrically controlled watering hardware sitting down at Home Depot just *waiting* to become part of some crazy permie chicken-watering project!

For the time being, I think I'm simply going to re-route the least-important valve on the sprinkler system as the input to the chicken waterer, and use a stand-alone timer on the output, since I don't really want to hack up the existing system *too* much. At that point the waterer will be re-filled once day automatically, and periodically drained. Not only will this prevent new mosquitoes from being produced in my yard, but it will *also* cause existing ones to waste their precious eggs into a system from which they will never return!

Comments

[errantember.livejournal.com]

Another, simpler method that occurred to me that's even more diabolical is to put a very fine screen about 1 inch under the water. If the eggs sink when they first hit the water, they would go down to the bottom and hatch, then be unable to get back to the surface for air! It would mean a steadily increasing charnel house of bloated, rotting dead mosquito baby bodies, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I might just add a manual valve for draining the water instead.

[errantember.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately the eggs float:

http://www.mosquitoes.org/LifeCycle.html

However, it says that even the fastest mosquitoes take about 4 days to fully develop, while the averages is more like ten, so draining the system once or twice a week should be sufficient to solve the problem.

It also occurs to me that if I used a tip box, the kind that automatically empty when they get to a certain amount of water, I could get all the same functionality with a single valve. I would just have to have it put out enough water to tip the box, and enough more to mostly fill it. I might have to prime it the first time, and evaporation would be a factor, but it might just work. I could be made very arty, too.

[agua-miel.livejournal.com]

*hugs*
Guess what?We're moving back to Austin in two weeks. Can't wait to see you! :)

[errantember.livejournal.com]

Wow! Sweet! It will fantastic to see you again!

Unless I have to give your Elysium pass back, in which case I'm going to hide from you. :)

I have a girlfriend moving out to Portland, so maybe you can tell her about your experiences there.

[laughingturtle.livejournal.com]

You could try putting some goldfish in the water tank. They will eat the mosquito eggs...at least that is the theory that I am working off of since I just set up three rubbermaid containers in my yard with goldfish in them. :-) Thanks for keeping us posted on your chickens and the inventions you make to go with them. My chickens are jealous that they don't have cool stuff like that. LOL

[errantember.livejournal.com]

I'm interested to see how your goldfish setups work. I tried something similar with Siamese Fighting Fish, which live in puddles in the natural world, but they died, probably because the water got too hot. However, in the meantime, it definitely reduced the mosquito population.

I'm glad you're having fun with the chicken adventures. The glue is drying on the drain port now, but I'm already thinking the tip-box is probably a better design.