Water, Water, Everywhere

I continued to torture myself last week with my project selection. Raising pastured poultry is usually accomplished by moving floorless shelters across a pasture. This achieves the goal of having the birds on grass to eat forage, worms, and bugs, and take natural dust baths. This system simultaneously achieves the goal of keeping the birds alive by protecting them from predators that desire to attack by way of land and air. Ultimately this system is a lot more work for the farmer but produces a nutrient-dense product that has the characteristics we are looking for. Since the houses are never in the same place for more than a day or so, watering the birds has been a constant challenge. We have transported with a tractor all of the water for all of the pastured poultry we have raised. My plan for this year was to make an investment upfront that would save us time throughout the year. I was a little late, but last week I was able to run 600 feet of water line through our primary poultry pasture and insert a water access point every 150 feet. We can now water the chickens/turkeys with the ease of turning on a spigot.