How to Clean Chicken Drinker Lines

The three main ingredients to growing a bird are water, air and feed. This time, we're focusing on water, and specifically, cleaning chicken drinker lines in poultry houses. https://www.southlandorganics.com/blo...

If you give your birds high-quality water, but they drink it through dirty lines, then what’s the use? Of course, it’s still important to get your water checked for the proper pH level, minerals, bacteria—all of those kinds of things. But you also have to remember to clean the drinker lines, also known as water lines. The best time to clean drinker lines is between flocks. You can do a stronger cleaning when birds aren't in the poultry houses.

Many growers use one of two common cleaning products to clean their drinker lines: chlorine or peroxide. With chlorine, the pH must be below seven for it to be an effective disinfectant. If the pH is above seven, the chlorine won’t hold the cleaning ability to disinfectant the lines.

Peroxide is probably the more popular choice of the two cleaning products. In addition to disinfecting, it has the unique ability to break up scale buildup in the line as well. There are several different forms of peroxide, including peracetic acid (PAA), which is basically peroxide and acetic acid. If you've ever been around PAA, it smells like vinegar because acetic acid is what gives vinegar its notorious smell. The acetic acid helps the peroxide stay more stable, making it effective for longer in the water line.

With any product, reading the label is the most important step. If the product says to leave it for X amount of time, you need to stick to that. Always check the label for instructions on when to use the product because some products can be used with birds in the house, and other products should only be used between flocks.

Maintenance is done to prevent something bad from happening down the road. In the case of cleaning chicken drinker lines, bacteria is the “bad thing” we’re preventing by cleaning them. Bacteria is everywhere. But when bacteria gets in water, it starts sticking to things, catching microscopic organic material and creating a harmful biofilm. Since the house is kept warm for the birds, it’s the ideal warm, wet environment for the bad bacteria to grow. No matter how much you try, drinker lines are going to harbor bad bacteria, so the more you can keep it moving, the better. Let that motivate you to stick to a water line maintenance schedule, regularly flushing out the lines with a cleaner or probiotic, to prevent bad bacteria from running rampant through the lines.