Post Your First Egg of 2016!!!

[KsKingBee]

Would you share the webcam info? Jan Opine uses one too.

 

[Garden Peas]

Sure. It was pretty clear that there was egg-eating going on, but the more frequently that I went outside, the more the hens freaked out. They literally managed to stop laying (retain the egg) rather than have it in what they viewed as a stressful situation. Obviously that was a serious concern, and I needed to break the egg-eating cycle too.

I found lots of webcams on Amazon and finally decided I would try this one:

Vimtag (Fujikam) 361 HD, IP/Network ,Wireless, Video Monitoring, Surveillance, security camera,plug/play, Pan/Tilt with Two-Way Audio and Night Vision


Looks like it is on sale for $85 ($15 less than I paid for it). Set up was fairly painless -- initially you set it up in the house and plug it into your router. You set up all your passwords on your computer (it's pretty much plug & play, but need to make sure passwords change to protect your security!). Once it's running in the house, you unplug it and go stick it up wherever you want. You just need regular power, no hard-wired internet, as long as your wireless router can reach that far. If this is an issue, there are wireless boosters you can buy rather than running hard lines out to the pea pen, which would have annoyed me to have to do

However, if your wireless isn't so great, you can run it off a hard connection to your router or modem -- streaming HD video does suck up a certain amount of bandwidth

I usually keep it in night vision mode (that's why the black and white) and I've optimized the settings to get clear pix using that. In day mode, the picture is in color. There's a variety of settings that can be adjusted with sliders to optimize the picture as well as various settings for resolution (such as HD), and a mode setting to choose between day, night and auto -- on auto, it will go into night vision mode if it is too dark for good pictures in the daylight mode. I was pretty amused when I saw the difference between the bright white of a newly-laid (body temperature) egg compared to the colder ceramic ones...

I am hooked on the pan capability -- it can pan up and down and back and forth either using a digital control (it's a little mouse-over toggle image or you can use the touch screen) on the computer, or by just dragging the image with my finger on my cell phone screen. The little camera just wings around on its base out in the peashed -- the peas don't seem to be bothered by the slight noise of the motor, though they do sometimes wake up and look at it. The info on Amazon claims it has a zoom, but it doesn't really, it's a "digital" zoom, so you can expand your image to look at a smaller bit of it, but you lose resolution, just like on your cellphone camera...

We've had a certain amount of fun with the two-way comms... there's a built-in microphone and speaker. I can yell "GET AWAY FROM THE EGGS!" -- not that it helps much when the peas are after a snack

-- and I can talk to @PeaLover130 if I have sent her out there to do something, and she can talk back (a skill she has mastered

). We can also listen in on the peas with our microphone muted and can hear what's going on outside. We call it PeaTV, of course... We can access from any of the cellphones and home computers, just need to enter the various passwords and log in. (On my phone, "logging in" consists of tapping the screen twice -- not exactly hard, even for an old fogey like me...) I can access it on my phone from anywhere that I have cell service or wi-fi service, so I don't need to be on my home network to see what's going on.

Overall, I have found it to be user-friendly and it doesn't require much in the way of computer skills to set up or operate. I'm planning to add more (the crime here is through the roof). This one does need to be out of the rain, so I will have to get a different one to monitor the front door.... (There was news video not long ago showing footage from a local homeowner's webcam of some creeps trying the front door while armed with a massive pistol held up at the ready in the other hand at something like 4 am... that has led to more Amazon research on what kinds don't need to be weather-protected, as you can well imagine! I am SO going to move!!!)

Okay, maybe that was more info that you wanted,..

 

[KsKingBee]

I love your long posts! Thanks for the review, any regrets or is there on that you think you would have rather had?

 

[Garden Peas]

I haven't updated my research to see what's new (technology evolves faster than I do

) but I'm ecstatic with this one. I haven't found one darned thing to complain about. If I could pluck features from a dream camera, maybe a real zoom rather than a digital one, but not sure that's readily available in the nanny cams (you do find it on outdoor security cams, but there's trade-offs in resolution and price and what-not). You can hook up bunches off them and just sit at your computer and touch which camera you want to see the picture from, and the built-in software just does it. Better than a lot of security systems that you see in commercial buildings. Oh, if you want to record (other than screen shots), there's a place on the camera for an SD card. There are also a bunch of features for home security like motion detection settings.

Hope this helps

 

[BackyardMarana]

HellI I have a question .can a peahen not lay if she is in a coop with chickens I barely bought them can she feel streesed or something that wontake her lay .she has a male and he is starting to open his train what does that mean .im new to peafowl thanks for any help you can give .

 

[Birdrain92]

HellI I have a question .can a peahen not lay if she is in a coop with chickens I barely bought them can she feel streesed or something that wontake her lay .she has a male and he is starting to open his train what does that mean .im new to peafowl thanks for any help you can give .

When a peacock starts fanning that's usually a sign that breeding season is going to start soon. The chickens may try to pick on her since she is laying down for an extended period of time but she may get really aggressive towards the chickens as well.

 

[BackyardMarana]

Thanks for helping when will my peahen start to lay ?

 

[barkerg]

Thanks for helping when will my peahen start to lay ?

She'll give you an idea when she starts pacing the pen late in the day (if penned) and clicking. If free ranged, she will do her business in a sneaky way and you'll just have to watch her, if she is free ranged, she will lay her eggs and everytime she leaves the nest she will walk about 3 feet away and take off flying honking and screaming, this is her way of diverting predators attention away from the nest. Peahens are also known to drop a decoy egg away from the nest, just fyi and I hope it helps.

Gerald Barker

 

[BackyardMarana]

Ok thanks.

 

[KsKingBee]

HellI I have a question .can a peahen not lay if she is in a coop with chickens I barely bought them can she feel streesed or something that wontake her lay .she has a male and he is starting to open his train what does that mean .im new to peafowl thanks for any help you can give .

They lay and set fine in confinement.




I am getting one egg per day now!