For the same cost as one more indoor waterer, we built an outdoor system with 10 times the capacity that won’t require much extra work from us to keep up.

Watering chickens is a dilemma if the owner wants to go out of town for a few days, so I came up with this backup system. I took an 18-inch-long, 6-inch PVC pipe and cut it in half lengthwise.

Here are some points of consideration when setting up your DIY automatic sprinkler system: Measure, even roughly, ahead of time when purchasing hoses. I squeaked by with 50 footers but had I known ...