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Links
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/
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
CHICKAM!
Every year, my husband and I host a live webcam 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. 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 so you can see and hear baby chicks playing and doing their cute baby chick thing. 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. It does NOT go on year-round, but only once or twice in the Spring--so don't miss it!
THE NEXT CHICKAM HATCH IS DUE TO START ON FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26TH. I'm aiming for around 12 noon, give or take a few hours in either direction (Mother Nature has her OWN schedule). We are in California so all times are PST (Pacific Standard Time). We may place the cam out in the yard, pointed at the adult chickens before that to test it, so you can see the existing flock. Mother Nature goes by her OWN schedule, so we start the cam early just in case the hatch starts early, so the webcast will begin as soon as we see eggs rocking and hear peeping. If you tune in and see EGGS, it means the hatch is imminent! There are going to be 4 varieties of chicken eggs in each of the 2 incubators in our kitchen this year. We tried something a little different and ordered eggs online this year. Since these eggs were shipped to us via the postal service, and because of possible rough handling while enroute, shipped eggs have a notoriously low hatch rate. So we don't know how many, or if ANY of these eggs will hatch. The eggs are numbered so that you can cheer on the egg of your choice, and will include Giant Cochin, Salmon Favorelle, Silkie and Belgian d'Uccle breed eggs.
The incubator units are Miller Little Giant #9200s--one is a forced air, the other a still air unit, both are the styrofoam tabletop models. 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. During the hatch we are quite busy and aren't able to answer all questions, but we'll try. 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.
NOTE: Some of the eggs are so dark shelled, it is impossible to candle them to see if there are chicks inside.
Again, between now and the hatch, we'll be testing the cam and sites by showing the flock and maybe the nest boxes. Here are the links to the sites for the webcast, when it begins!
This site on UStream is best for kids (no chat) to watch the eggs hatch and will be kid-safe:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chickam2008/
To see the cam with no chat, click here:
http://chickam.jackshenhouse.com/chickam.html/
You can go to this page and click on the cam to see it full screen, or click the link underneath the cam to go directly to the site.
copyright 2003-2010 by Velvet Sparrow