I hear her working at it for minutes on end and will go try it myself and though we push the metal ball up to start the flow of water nothing comes out without me pulling out the bottle and shaking it. I'm worried she's getting dehydrated but I can't check it every hour. Any ideas for fixing this? I hate to buy a new one if this is easily corrected.

Some water bottles are poorly made and unfortunately just don't work.

I have bought several over the years that either dripped continuously and made the cage wet or didn't drip at all.

I use water bowls now for my rats I got so fed up with drippers not working.

Thank you for responding! That's what I ended up doing, as well, because I didn't want to buy another water bottle that was unreliable.