Do Chickens Need Water in the Coop at Night?

What the one source on drinking times says

The winter fact sheets for backyard flocks do not answer this question. The University of Maryland, Wisconsin–Madison, New Hampshire and Ohio State extension services all write about keeping water liquid, and none of them says whether a waterer belongs inside the coop at night.

The clearest statement comes from a different kind of document: the Poultry Drinking Water Primer of the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension (Bulletin 1301), written for commercial poultry houses with water meters. It says:

• Birds will not drink if they are not eating, and the reverse.
• During dark periods the birds rest and, as a result, do not consume water.
• Where lighting programs are used, there are two peaks: the first just after the lights come on, the second just before they turn off.
• In dark periods of more than eight hours it is not unusual for some water consumption to register.

Two limits belong with this. The bulletin describes broilers in large houses, and applying it to a few hens in a backyard coop is our reading, not a statement of the authors. And “do not consume water” is a description of a pattern, with the eight-hour remark as its own exception. A long winter night is longer than eight hours.

What follows for a backyard coop

The last row is the winter problem. The question is rarely where the waterer stands. It is whether the water is liquid at the moment the birds want it most. The University of Maryland Extension notes that birds cannot break through ice to reach water.

Morning and evening are the two times that count

Ohio State University Extension recommends checking the water source in the evening for frozen water, so that the birds have water available for the full 24 hours. Read together with the drinking peaks, that gives a simple routine:

1. Before dusk: check for ice and refill, so the birds can drink before they go to roost.
2. At first light: liquid water has to be there. Without power that means carrying out a fresh container early. With a fixed outlet, a thermostatically controlled waterer covers it. The device types are on the heated chicken waterer overview.

The unpowered version of that routine, with a spare container that thaws indoors, is described under keeping chicken water from freezing without electricity. The full list of methods is in how to keep chicken water from freezing.

Inside the coop or in the run?

Both work. Each has a cost in winter.

• Inside: the water is out of the wind and freezes later. But a spilled or leaking waterer wets the bedding, and Ohio State points out that leaks contribute to humidity problems in the coop. According to the University of Minnesota Extension, high moisture together with cold is the main cause of frostbite. A closed drinker with nipples spills less than an open pan. How damp air leaves the coop is covered under chicken coop ventilation.
• In the run: the coop stays dry, and the birds have to be let out to drink. In hard frost the water freezes sooner there.

Some keepers take the waterer out of the coop at night to keep the bedding dry. Nothing in the sources speaks against that, as long as the water is back, and liquid, when the day begins.

In short

Chickens do not need to drink during the dark hours on the roost. They need water from first light until they go up again, every day. If a gap is unavoidable, the page on how long chickens can go without water sets out what the sources say about it. Unfamiliar terms are explained in the glossary.