In the Fall of 2014 my mother transitioned out of her job and was looking for some way to make some money. That got me thinking of something I could make and sell. I had some chickens and had limited time with my day job. I checked to see what was currently available on Amazon at the time. I saw a lot of 5 gallon buckets that needed manually refilled. I knew there had to be a better way. So I created the better product. I was the first one to do that for the chicken waterers that existed on Amazon.
I ordered some buckets and parts to find the perfect combination. Many times the bucket lids wouldn't work because they wouldn't come off very easily. In Feburary of 2015 I started selling the Automatic Chicken Waterer.
Selling at retail stores
Then in March 2015 I formed Farmer Brad LLC. The waterer received great feedback and sales taking place on my website and amazon. Then I was looking for a retail outlet. I found this store in Indianapolis area, Agrarian. They are an urban homestead store where people can get feed, coops, and other supplies.
in June 2015, Rural King gave me the opportunity to place 4 buckets in their New Castle, IN store as a trial run. They didn't sell very well so Rural King decided to just focus on drop shipping the items on Ruralking.com
By the second year of production I had sold over 600 units. I wanted to explore a way of increasing production. I contacted Kandu Industries and they were able to have their workers assemble 100 chicken waterers and shipped them to Amazon Warehouse. This worked great because then when I was on vacation if my website or amazon got an order I could have amazon send it from their inventory.
2018 - Redesigned
After I had received some feedback about the garden hose adapter leaking at times, I decided a redesign was needed. In June 2018 I started prototyping with quick connects and using reverse osmosis tubing. I took the hose connection away from the bucket by 2' of tubing that gave people better flexibility when it came to installing the Automatic Chicken Waterer. By July the redesigns were complete. I sent one to SSL Family Dad to confirm the changes were better.
The updates were well received. I hope you have enjoyed learning more about the history of the Automatic Chicken Waterer created and made by Farmer Brad.