A fun one...

[tech_guy]

I have chickens (ex-battery hens) - I'm now thinking of setting up chook cam!

[BandyQuill]

dont know im sure the technology has changed since then, it wouldve been like 15 years ago ish...

[mattx]

I have chickens (ex-battery hens) - I'm now thinking of setting up chook cam!

I wanted to get some chickens but the missus won't let me........ How long have you been keeping them for & are they that hard to look after ?

[tech_guy]

We have four that we got last March from the charity that rehomes ex-battery hens - Battery Hen Welfare Trust

Fantastic to look after but they will EAT YOUR GARDEN. We gave them free range in the back garden and they have eaten everything, including the lawn.

Cheap to look after - a bag of chicken food costs £6 and lasts a month. We feed them all our food scraps, and they reward us with 3 or 4 eggs a day.

Really funny and intelligent animals. More pets than anything else. They love tinned tuna and lettuce.

[mattx]

We have four that we got last March from the charity that rehomes ex-battery hens - Battery Hen Welfare Trust

Fantastic to look after but they will EAT YOUR GARDEN. We gave them free range in the back garden and they have eaten everything, including the lawn.

Cheap to look after - a bag of chicken food costs £6 and lasts a month. We feed them all our food scraps, and they reward us with 3 or 4 eggs a day.

Really funny and intelligent animals. More pets than anything else. They love tinned tuna and lettuce.

I really want to get some - problem is the garden. Got a patch which the kids play on, then I have my bit in which I grow my plants and veg. I don't think the kids would apprecaite me nicking their patch !! I already have plans on turning it into an allotment for when they get fed up with it.....

[tech_guy]

You can keep them in a run - they don't need a massive area - and let them out occasionally. They'll eat all your slugs and sh!t on everything (which makes good compost btw)!

Ours beat the neighbourhood cats up if they're stupid enough to venture in to our garden.

[booggerboy]

Some cycle computers will allow you to enter the wheel radius/circumference manually. Some of the posher ones also measure cadence, or pedal rotations - that'd tell you enough to work it out yerself.

Can you get mini-pedometers? If so, how big is the length of "stride"?

bb

[dhicks]

I really want to get some - problem is the garden.

Saw these a while back - not practical in my flat 2-and-a-half stories up, though:

Omlet UK | Our fantastic chicken house and rabbit hutch the eglu! | Keeping chickens and keeping rabbits

I can't help thinking that all those computer sensor kits on show at BETT for ICT/DT could be used to put together a simple wheel-speed measuring device - simple infrared emitter and reciver, one each side of the wheel, when the sensor is off you know a wheel spoke is in the way of the beam, when it's on you know it isn't, see how often you flip between off and on and colculate speed accordingly. Or even use a small patch of reflective tape on the side of the wheel - shine infrared emitter so it hits reflective tape as it comes round each time and shine back to sensor placed next to emitter.

--
David Hicks

[witch]

Would love a webcam for seeing what my guinea pigs and rabbits do when I am not there. But as they don't 'do' wheels, I would probably end up with a lot of footage of small rodents asleep

[Little-Miss]

Is there software to record from the webcam (knowing full well there is software out for everything!)

[tech_guy]

As Mattx has recommended - there's the excellent YawCam - great bit of software.

[mattx]

My setup - [ for Little Miss's benifit ]

Link to 5 quid cam to follow..........

Got the cam from here:

http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/powers...__W0QQ_armrsZ1

But he does not have any at the moment by the looks of it - so just search:

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_nkw=i...mera&_osacat=0

If you get stuck with setting up Yawcam, let us know. Myself or someone else on here will help - it's easy to setup.

And loads will pop up.

The infared setup is very good on these cheap things - I used it last year with the bird box of blue tits at the school - check out:

http://www.youtube.com/mattx27

And look at the short clips of movies I made with it of the chicks. [ You will have to go through my crap of uploaded vids....]

BTW - I've been drinking ever since I got home so at the moment I am rather hyper.....

[laserblazer]

If you can't set the odometer to the cage wheel then divide the cage wheel diameter by the odometer wheel size setting and then multiply by the odometer reading.

[Little-Miss]

wow! A day in the life of Mattx and family. How many lads you got?

Thanks for the help, i shall go sort myself a webcam!

[Little-Miss]

These are link from Facebook at the mo so you might not see them at work!