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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/
'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.htm
CHICKAM!
Every year, my husband and I 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. We have two incubators placed 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 will run, 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. It does NOT go on year-round, but only once or twice in the Spring--so don't miss it!
Good news! We moved in January 2012 to a new home in the country, and our new Internet service seems to be adequate for us to once again stream the hatch! THE NEXT CHICKAM HATCH WILL BE IN APRIL 7TH-8TH, EASTER WEEKEND 2012!
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, so all times are PST (Pacific Standard Time). Incubation of chicken eggs takes 21 days. We may place the cam out in the yard pointed at the adult chickens & nest boxes before the hatch to test it, so you can see the existing flock including the grown-up chickens from previous years' Chickams! 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. 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.
The webcam we use is a Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000. Adobe Flash Media Encoder 3 runs a high-resolution stream to UStream, which in turn does the broadcasting. 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. The maximum number of eggs we like to place in each one is 20--more than that we've found tends to give us a less successful hatch rate. Plus once they hatch, ya gotta be able to HOUSE all the little buggers as they grow up! 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. 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!
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!
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, please be considerate to all.
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!
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!
http://twitter.com/
I'm also on LiveJournal if you want to read more about life with chickens and other critters at our house:
http://velvet-sparrow.livejournal.com/
copyright 2003-2012 by Velvet Sparrow