Lubing Drinker Cup Blue

The clean way for chickens to drink

An open water dish in a chicken coop doesn’t stay drinkable for long. Chickens scratch litter into it, walk through it, perch on it and foul it — and dirty water spreads disease through a flock faster than almost anything else. A drinker cup fixes that by holding only a small amount of water at a time, refilling automatically as your chickens drink, with nothing for a bird to stand in.

This is the genuine German-made Lubing cup — the same cup used in commercial poultry sheds worldwide — supplied exactly as Lubing builds it, original float fitted, with a blue Dine-A-Chook upgrade float included separately in the bag.

How a Lubing drinker cup works

A float sits in the cup. As your chickens drink and the water level falls, the float drops and opens a small stainless valve at the back of the cup, letting water flow in from your drinker or drum. When the cup refills, the float rises and closes the valve. The float is the only part you’ll ever routinely replace — the stainless valve doesn’t wear out, it just needs to be kept clean.

Both floats refill the cup automatically — your birds never have to press or peck anything. The difference is the shut-off point: the original Lubing float, fitted as standard, closes the valve at a modest water level, while the blue Dine-A-Chook upgrade float in the bag lets the cup fill a little higher before closing, so there is always more visible water. The only visible difference between the two is a slightly thicker square section where the float presses the valve. Either float works; swapping takes a minute with pliers.

Does the blue float do anything different?

Two different questions hide in there, and they have different answers. Between the colours: nothing — the yellow, pink and blue Dine-A-Chook floats perform identically, so colour is pure preference. Blue stands out well against the red cup, which makes a quick water check from the coop door easier; pick yellow or pink if they suit your run better.

But every Dine-A-Chook upgrade float, whatever its colour, does differ from the original Lubing float that comes fitted. Both refill the cup automatically — the upgrade float simply lets the cup fill a little higher before the valve closes, so your birds always have more visible water. Colour changes nothing — the upgrade does.

What it fits

The cup screws into a standard 1/8” BSPF thread and fits every upright Dine-A-Chook chicken drinker, drum drinker outlet and automatic drinker frame. It also suits low-pressure DIY waterers built with our DIY Chicken Waterer components — but read the policy below before you build.

Mount it at the bird’s eye height

The most common cause of dirty cups is mounting them too low. A cup near the ground catches everything your chickens scratch up. They don’t need to look down into their water — birds find it by smell — so the cup can sit as high as the smallest bird’s eye line. Mount it there and it stays far cleaner between rinses.

Making your own drinker? Read this first.

We love a clever DIY watering system, and after 17 years we’ve genuinely seen it all — IBC totes, rainwater tanks, runs of poly pipe, and a few setups so good we’ve pinched ideas from them. So here’s some straight talk, from experience.

Genuine German-made Lubing cups have been the standard in commercial poultry for decades, and across the tens of thousands we’ve supplied since 2009, true cup failures are rare. But no drinker cup is set-and-forget. A cup that leaks, overflows or drains your reservoir is almost always telling you one of four things:

• Head pressure is too high. Lubing cups are made for low-pressure systems. If the water surface sits more than 35 cm above the cup, it will leak — that’s not a fault, it’s physics. Measure it.
• Airlock. A sealed reservoir stops water flowing. Loosen the lid and listen for the hiss.
• Dirt in the valve. Rain and tank water carry sediment and debris. One speck on the valve seat and the cup drips until it’s cleaned.
• It’s due for a service. Like your car, your mower or anything else with moving parts, a cup needs a few minutes of maintenance. We strip and clean ours every fortnight — monthly at the very least.

A full strip-down takes about ten minutes: cup, float, pin and the two-part valve.

Building your own system?

Everything we know is yours, free: head pressure, header tanks, airlocks and the full cleaning routine are in our DIY Drinker Guide and Lubing Cup Guide, and our DIY Chicken Waterer components range is purpose-designed for reliable low-pressure systems. What we ask you to understand is that we can’t fault-find or troubleshoot a system we didn’t design or supply — in almost every case, the cup is the messenger, not the cause.

Bought a complete Dine-A-Chook system?

Then you have our full support — that’s part of what you paid for. All we ask is that you work through the quick checks in our troubleshooting guide first. Most problems resolve on the spot, and if yours doesn’t, tell us what you found and we’ll sort it out.

Cups, floats and spares

Every serviceable part of a Dine-A-Chook drinker is available on its own — you never need to replace the whole unit:

• Replacement floats — yellow Dine-A-Chook upgraded float
• Replacement O-rings, 10 pack — the seal where the cup screws in
• Lubing Drinker Cups – 5 Pack — for multi-cup drinkers and spares on hand
• Lubing Drinker Cup – yellow float
• Lubing Drinker Cup – pink float
• Installation kit — the correct 9mm drill bit and thread tap for DIY mounting
• Complete Dine-A-Chook drinkers — engineered for correct water height, fully supported