Silkie Moving Day

arlee453

Songster
12 Years
Aug 13, 2007
3,768
26
221
near Charlotte NC
I moved the 6 wk old Silkies out today - it's a nice bright sunny day and the high 50s temps don't seem to phase them. They are having a blast out there - very glad to be out of their very cooped up brooder!

I've got the heat lamp inside the barn so they will have a little extra heat tonight, but they are all fully feathered and they are not calling for below freezing temps for at least another week so I think they will be OK. If it gets REALLY cold they can always go back into the brooder for the night.

I'm glad to have them out of the house - now there's just the 19 week old babies in here with me.

I've turned the outdoor cam on so you can see them in the 'ChickNBarn/Run' - it's in the right of the image. At night I'll switch the view to the brooder so you can see the little babies running around too.

Enjoy!

www.arlee453.camstreams.com
 
The particular outdoor cam I have runs about $300 for the initial setup package. It's by WiLife (recently acquired by Logitech). The setup to get it to broadcast was not easy - required some XML programming, etc and is not supported by the vendor, as they provide their own remote viewing site. There are other outdoor cameras, but I liked WiLife because it runs the signal over the exisiting electrical lines, rather than having to run Cat5, and the distance is too far for USB. A regular webcam doesn't work so well for outdoors, since they are made to focus on a short distance and small viewing area (ie, from the monitor to your face).

My indoor cam is a $40 microsoft webcam I bought at Walmart. I broadcast it using Microsoft encoder and the only real setup required was to configure my wireless router to let traffic out on the port that I am using. (which I would have had to do anyway for the Wilife cam also)

Camstreams.com is a free hosting service - they do provide basic information on how to broadcast and even have their own broadcast package of Encoder to make it easier.

A really good working knowledge of networking and basic PC would be very helpful if setting one up to broacast across the internet.

If all you want is one you can watch yourself, then it's really easy with most any camera that is USB/PC compatable, or with one like my WiLife, you can use their personal viewer to monitor your chickens.
 
Do you have any pics of your coop and run? I really like the pvc hoop run a lot and it looks pretty sturdy. Would you say it would be cheaper than a normal fense type?
 
Corey,

I'm sure the PVC and hoops would be cheaper than most fencing.

I have around $100 in the entire run cover.

I used 4 rolls of deer netting at about $15 each
24 10' long PVC pipes at about $1.10 each
and about 32 clamps at a little more than $1 each.
Oh, and a boat load of dollar store cable ties to secure the netting to the hoops.

Pros are that it's light weight, easy to do and cheap. AND it keeps the chickens in their area, which is the primary function for my setup. PLUS it's nice and high, so I can walk around and doesn't need any center supports.

Cons are that I am sure it would NOT keep out a determined predator. My girls are locked up in their coop each night as the deer netting IS surprisingly stong, but I don't think it would keep out a really determined coon or possum or dog. Also, it wouldn't work if your run area is more than 20' or so - longer stretches of the PVC hoops are not stable enough without center supports.

Here's my thread on the run cover building process:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=20020
 
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