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Links
Chicken Sites
The nice folks at My Pet Chicken have tons of great info, including a 'Which Chicken?' breed selector to help you determine which breed suits your needs best. They sell all kinds of chicken supplies and chicken-related merchandise for you, and you can purchase as few as three baby chicks (as opposed to a hatchery's normal minimum order of 25). This is naturally more expensive, since they must include a device to keep the chicks warm enough to survive the trip--but it's a boon to those that don't need 25 chicks!
http://www.mypetchicken.com/default.aspx/
'Chickens' magazine, which offers articles on keeping chickens. Available online or in-store only for now, but they may offer subscriptions someday! In the Jan/Feb. 2012 issue, I contributed some material for author Cherie Langlois' article, 'The Basics of Behavior':
http://www.hobbyfarms.com/chickens-magazine/chickens-january-february-2012-table-of-contents.aspx/
Chicken Rescue
My friend Kasia runs a rescue in Louisiana for chickens, ducks and other birds, she is very dedicated, professionally trained and wants to see her rescue spread until it is a statewide organization.
http://www.kasiasark.com/
Chicken Cams
My friend Linda's 24 hour a day chicken cam, she also has pics of her flock:
http://www.chickenhabit.com/
The Hen Cam (daylight hours only), where there is also a nice 'hen biographies' page so you can learn the flocks' names:
http://www.hencam.com/index.php
Visit hens Thelma & Louise in The Netherlands:
http://www.barboomba.com/
More chickens, with two cams to choose from:
http://www.ericsound.com/chickencam.html
Chickens in Germany:
http://www.huehnercam.de/
Vermont chickens:
http://www.chestnutbay.com/CoopCam.htm
Vasalini's chicken cam in Massachusetts, very popular so they sometimes struggle with bandwidth problems:
http://users.adelphia.net/~chickencam/page2.html
Advice For Keeping Urban Chickens
Path To Freedom's page on keeping chickens in an urban setting:
http://www.pathtofreedom.com/pathproject/simpleliving/chickens.shtml
Yahoo Groups 'Urban Chickens' group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/urbanchickens/
Another site dedicated to advice to urban chicken owners, with tips to help fight city hall:
http://www.chickenvideo.com/articles.html
A new site on keeping house chickens:
http://housechickenclub.webs.com/
Fun Stuff
Nothing to do with chickens, but here is one of my other just-for-fun projects, the Found Origami site!
http://jackshenhouse.com/FoundOrigamiHome.html
CHICKAM!
From now on, year-round every Saturday during daylight hours and weather permitting, we will be broadcasting Chickam showing the adult chickens out in the flock so you can follow your favorites from years' past! Use the same link below to Chickam.
Every year, we host a live webcam event called 'Chickam', where you can see and hear baby chickens hatch out live, then follow their progress for a couple of weeks in the brooder box. This year we upgraded and bought a new incubator, a ReptiPro 6000. It's the size of a mini-frig and sits on our kitchen island. We use a webcam with sound to broadcast the hatching of chicken eggs, live and as it happens, followed by the cam being placed in the brooder box for about 8 weeks so you can see and hear baby chicks playing and doing their cute baby chick thing. The cam in the brooder box runs, with sound, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 8 weeks until it is time for the chicks to be turned out into the outdoor flock with the adults. The hatch is fascinating to watch for adults as well as children, and has been quite popular (more than 350,000 views) since we started it in 2008. Hatching & baby chicks does NOT go on year-round, but only once or twice in the Spring--so don't miss it!
THE NEXT CHICKAM HATCH WILL BE IN 2014. We usually hatch around Easter. If you tune in and see eggs, that means that the hatch has begun! I'll also update on Twitter (link at the bottom of this page).
If you want to be emailed about a week ahead of time with a notification so that you don't miss it, please email me at my gmail address on the main page of this site to let me know. We are in northern Nevada in the United States, so all times are PST (Pacific Standard Time). Incubation of chicken eggs takes 21 days. Mother Nature goes by her OWN schedule, so we start the the webcast as soon as we see eggs rocking and hear peeping--which can sometimes be early by as much as 24-48 hours. Again, my advice is for you to check the Chickam UStream site once or twice a day for 1-2 days before the hatch date to make sure you don't miss it. If you tune in and see EGGS, it means the hatch is imminent! If we use mail order eggs, since the eggs were shipped to us via the postal service, and because of possible rough handling while enroute, just know that shipped eggs have a notoriously low hatch rate. So we don't know how many, or if ANY of mail order eggs will hatch. Eggs from our hens or that we have purchased locally are much more reliable. It all depends on what breeds we want to hatch this year. The eggs are numbered so that you can cheer on the egg of your choice, and the UStream site will have all the info as to what breed chicken eggs we are hatching this year.
NOTE: We candle the eggs several times during incubation to be sure we have live, viable chicks. Candling is the process of shining a bright light through the eggshell to check for a living embryo inside. Some of the eggs are so dark shelled, it is impossible to candle them to see if there are chicks inside, so we just have to wait and see with those!
What Equipment Do We Use And How Does Hatching Work?
The webcam we use is a Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000. We use Adobe Flash Media Encoder 3.2 which in turn runs a high-resolution stream to the online site UStream.tv, which does the broadcasting. We always start a Chickam thread on the website SomethingAwful.com on the GBS forum, which is an adult-oriented site and not for children. On SomethingAwful you need to be a member to post in the thread but you can view the thread for free. Our current incubator is a ReptiPro 6000 tabletop cabinet-type. We keep any unhatched eggs in the incubator for three days beyond the hatch date in order to catch any stragglers. You should be able to see the eggs rocking and hear the chicks peeping as the eggs get ready to hatch when the cam begins. The hatch process can take hours--up to 24--so it is NOT an 'instant gratification' thing. You will see the chick 'pip' the egg first towards the large end of the egg--pecking a breathing hole. Then it will 'unzip' the shell, pecking as it turns in a circle inside the egg until it has come back to it's starting point--at which time it will struggle and kick free in a matter of minutes. Often chicks will pip, rest for anywhere from 20 minutes to several hours, then start the 'unzipping' process--which can also take many hours. During the hatch we are quite busy and aren't able to answer all questions, but we'll try.
Other Equipment
If we have any broody hens out in the coop, we may also place some eggs under them to hedge our bets--but since broodies stay clamped down on their eggs, you cannot watch those chicks hatch. Also, if we have a suitable broody mama for the hatched chicks once they are in the brooder box, we'll recruit her, it's SO sweet to watch a mama hen caring for her chicks!
THE RULES
WE HAVE ZERO TOLERANCE FOR HARDCORE FOUL LANGUAGE, RACIAL SLURS AND THE LIKE IN THE CHAT ROOM, OFFENDERS WILL BE BANNED IMMEDIATELY WITH NO SECOND CHANCES. Just so ya know. If you feel an irresistable urge to swear or otherwise foam at the mouth, go outside and howl at the moon or something. Lots of kids watch, including my daughter and her schoolmates, and Chickam is very popular with kindergarten classes--please be considerate to all. Just for kids & schools, we have a special 'picture & sound only' link, below.
Here are the links to the sites for the webcast, when it begins!
The UStream channel:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chickam2008/
To see the cam widescreen with no chat, click here. Also, since this site has no chat it is best for kids:
http://cdn1.ustream.tv/swf/4/viewer.228.swf?cid=1/538640&vrsl=c.4.283/
Follow Chickam on Twitter here!
https://twitter.com/
Chickam on Facebook!
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Chickam/339554187669
I also have a blog on Blogger as Jack's Henhouse if you want to read more about our family life with chickens and other critters at our house:
http://jackshenhouse.blogspot.com/
And on Twitter as Velvet Sparrow:
https://twitter.com/
copyright 2003-2013 by Velvet Sparrow