Can you stop quail roosting in their drinking cups?

[flickerfarkle]

For a couple of weeks I've been having excessive water consumption in both my breeding pens. It normally takes three days to go through the entire jug of water but for three nights straight it mysteriously ran empty overnight.

And the poop pans beneath the cages (autozone drip pans) have had water collecting in them, even though there was no rain. Which is the bigger problem because when the poop gets wet it stinks to high heaven and attracts flies by the gazillions. Plus it about triples the weight of the waste I'm collecting and throwing out.

I thought it might be defective cups so I replaced them and still had the water collecting in the poop pans.

I originally mounted the drinking cups in the fourth hole from the floor in 1/2" hardware cloth, about 2" from the floor at the top of the cup. I built these cages before my first eggs had hatched so I was guessing how high the birds could reach for a drink, and I underestimated how tall the cups could be and they could still reach them.

I've seen birds standing with one foot on the floor and the other in the cup, which I reckoned could lead to overflowing, so I re-mounted the cups and inch (two holes) higher, but now I see birds sitting perched with both feet in the cup.

So what's next? Move the cups again, mounting them higher still, or just live with the birds sabotaging their own drinking water?

 

[Nabiki]

Quail aren't the brightest birds on earth. If it's low enough for them to drink out of, they will stand in them.