POTD was improving the watering bucket for our (soon to be harvested) meat chickens. My wife made the watering can a few years ago; 5-gallon bucket with 5/16” holes drilled, tapped with a 1/8”-27 pipe tap, then screwed in what’s called a “chicken watering cup”. It works pretty well, the cups have a yellow spring-loaded plug that when bumped by a beak lets water run into the cup. The problem with her setup is the 5-gallon bucket is only about 1/8” thick; not a lot of thread engagement for the cups. The meat chickens put on a lot of weight in a hurry, little chick to an 9-pound bird in 6-10 weeks. When they get up in size, the clumsy oafs step on the cups and knock them loose. If they knock one completely out, there goes 4+ gallons of water into their pen.
POTD was to make some aluminum reinforcing nuts to shore up the cups. I used 1” aluminum; faced, center drilled, tap drilled, tapped, tapered the lead edge, knurled and parted. I used a couple of 3/8” washers to shim between the nut and bucket as I was afraid of torqueing too hard and snapping the plastic thread on the watering cups.
Works really well, the cups are very stable. Next step is whacking the herd. Oh, in case you are a member of the ASPCA and are concerned about the tight proximity of the birds, don’t worry. The first batch we raised years ago were allowed to free range. If you’ve ever had meat chickens, you can stop laughing at me now. All meat chickens want is water and food. When we let them free range, they never got more than 2 feet from the food and water. The smallest bird we’ve harvested had two breasts that weighed 15 oz. each. The largest, 1 lb. 15 oz. for each breast. We average over 5+ lbs. of meat per bird, you’re looking at well over 250 lbs. of chicken meat in the pen picture. My wife has the process down pretty well; I do the whacking, she does the skinning and parting out. Guess what's gonna be for dinner!
Thanks for looking, Bruce
Chicken watering cup; yellow detail is spring-loaded. Bump it and water trickles into the red cup
Faced
Used a center drill to spot. The tip of center drills are usually 120 deg. making them ideal for spotting 118 deg. drill bits
tap drill
Tapping a 1/8" - 27 pipe thread
checking the thread
Chamfering the surface. The thread is tapered, I'll know to start this end of the nut
knurled
parted
Ready for install
The nuts really helped stabilize the watering cups.
Gotta keep 'em hydrated
