This is how we water our chickens year round. In 2020 I put in water and power underground to our little chicken house. The chicken house it 2.5 m (8’) x 3.75 m (12’). This is a Little Giant automatic water bowls from Miller Hatcheries. They use a pneumatic tire valve core (like in your bicycle or car tire), a spring, and two locking nuts to set the water level in the bowl. They’re super nice to use because you just take them off, swirl them, dump them, rub them with your hand, rinse them (we just push the bowl up on the pin in the valve core to get a bit of water), and put them back on and they’re good to go. It takes less than a minute per bowl.

I have added heat tape to the pipe coming up from the ground to the house and on the plumbing in the house right down to the bowl. It generally stays thawed until around -10C. After that the valve and water in the bowl freeze but it takes around a minute with a heat gun to get it running again. I keep a heat gun in the chicken house for the purpose.