It's not the new camera that is noise, it's the fact that I've currently got the (very sensitive) mic actually resting on the cam housing, so it's picking up the tiny vibrations from the motors.

I'll try and remember to move it later today, apologies for not remembering sooner!

I'm just resetting my router - hencam should be back in a couple of minutes!

You might have heard me swearing last night when I realised the security light and the low-energy bulb I bought to use as a fill-in light at night for the new camera wouldn't fit.

The light fitting was too small for the (quite long) energy bulb!

Anyway, I popped back to B&Q this morning and swapped the tiny security light for something a bit more sizable, so I should be able to fit it tonight, so expect more swearing tonight at about 6pm!

The general idea is to fit the security light with energy-saving bulb to the side of the shed so it will hopefully provide enough light (at little cost to me or the environment) automatically when it gets dark, so the moving cam can provide nice clear images at night.

You might have heard that one of the hencam cameras failed recently, well I'm really pleased to say that a mysterious hencam-benefactor has donated a new professional cam.

First of all I'd like to say a big thank-you to them, especially as pieces of equipment such as this are well out of my budget - it can take a lot of our spare funds just keeping the site going, bandwidth, hosting etc etc.

The new camera offers some very exciting possibilities - I haven't had chance to play with the functions yet, but I'm sure you'll agree even with it stationary the picture quality is superb!

Once again, a big thank you, and to all our visitors, after all without you we wouldn't be here...

And I thought everyone should have a chance to see me cringe for all my worth...



Comments in the forum please!

Sad news that J D Salinger died - The Catcher in the Rye is one of my favourite books of all time, and one which helped me through my 'difficult teenage-angst time'.

In his own words: "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

One of the sweeping cameras seems to have developed a fault in it's "home" position - the image flashes/goes black occasionally when it's pointing directly at the feeders.

I'll have a go at cleaning it out (it may just have dust in it), and wiggle some contacts, but if it doesn't help then hopefully it's still under warranty and it's a trip back to the store (don't know how I'll explain the various layers of chicken crap, dirt, dust and feathers that's probably in and all over it!)

Wish me luck!

For the meantime, there's no moving cameras :-(

I managed to fix something that has been annoying me for a while now - the little scrolly 'recent forum posts' bit on the left-hand side, well you can hold your mouse over it to pause it, but you can also click a post to take you straight to that page so you can read the whole conversation. Well you can now, before it usually took you to a blank page, but I fixed it. :-)

And a big thank you to Paul in California who sent a donation towards the cost of the new feeders which has helped me square the purchase with Helen greatly! Thank you!

I also found hencam's 3D webcam the other day - now the weather is picking up, I'll try and get some more 3D footage of the girls, and also some of James the snake - I will let you know how I get on!

You might have noticed there are a couple of spangly additions to the coop - namely a very nice new hanging feeder, and drinker.

Scarlet over Christmas managed to break the last water drinker we had, which wasn't too bad really as it was meant for dogs so it wasn't ideally suited to chickens - it was too easy for them to get mud in the water which obviously has health implications.

The new drinker hangs higher and has a lip to hopefully keep the mud out and the water nice and clean!

The feeder is amazing - it will carry 3Kg of feed at a time and it has little dividers in the feeder which is a brilliant little touch - the first thing Tilly did after I used to put food down in a bowl was 'dig' it out with her beak looking for hidden treats, and the new feeder only lets them eat, not make a mess.

They were quite expensive (£26!) but the chickens seem to like them and they are a lot better design-wise than what they had before - now Milly can eat whilst keeping a healthy distance from Tilly (who won't normally allow Milly to eat if Tilly is)...

In other news, we're still researching what tree we should consider to replace the one we had removed - if you have any suggestions let us know!

I think the snow/ice is starting to thaw, which is brilliant! It's probably the first time in 4 weeks since it's been above freezing, so our road and hill is gradually starting to clear.

I'm seriously considering buying some of these beauties after the sodding hassle the ice has caused these last few weeks!

On Wednesday there was the worst black ice I'd ever seen, I went out to try and salt the road a bit before I set off to work, and as I got to where the road turns down towards the hill, I walked on what looked like normal road, but it was black ice and my legs flew from underneath and I cracked my head on the road - what was even scarier than that, was that I started to slide on my back down the bloody hill! Luckily I hit some snowier bits and stopped, but I had to crawl up the black ice on my hands and knees to get my hat that had fallen off, it was really bad. I went to bed early in the evening with a bad headache :-(

In the village, a lorry had jack-knifed at one end, and at the other cars couldn't get up the main street as it is a slight hill and gritters hadn't been able to get up it. All the buses were stopped too...

This morning I set off in the rain thinking the roads were clear, but there was black ice at the top of our hill again, and I didn't realise until I was on it and the car started to slip. I tried to reverse off it (no way was I going to go down the hill with it like that), but the car nose slipped so it pointed down the hill straight at one of our neighbour's parked cars. I tried all sorts, but I couldn't even get out of the car to grit because even with the handbrake on full, if I let go of the brakes it started to slide down the hill towards her car.

Luckily she must have heard me desperately trying to back away from her car as she came out, nearly fell on the ice, but then kindly dropped her car down so I could dump mine into the side of the road...

I don't ever want to see snow or ice ever again!!!

It's snowing like mad here, our hill looks treacherous, and even the main road through the village only has the odd 4x4 crawling up it, so I think I'm snowed in again...

I've emailed my boss to ask nicely if I can work from home, but how long is this bloody freezing weather going to stay with us?!

Right, I am making a start on working from home!

Even the hens don't want to get up.

Don't worry about the chainsaw noises you can hear currently on hencam - we're having our lovely Ash tree taken out.

The neighbours are worried that it could be rotten, so if any branches did fall off it and damage their property, we would be liable.

So we're having to pay £300 to have it removed, and as we live in a conservation area we have to replace it within a year with a tree of similar size...

Here's the last pic of the tree, we'll miss it, it's been here longer than we have...


[click for bigger]

Sorry to all the magpies that roosted in it - hopefully we'll have a replacement for you soon!

Hope everyone has a most excellent year, now that the Christmas is behind us and it's back to work, let's hope we don't all get too depressed!

Here's the latest couple of updates of Mark's various moustache stylings:

The fu-man-chu:


The walrus:


And wearing a little something we thought he'd appreciate for the New Year Party:

Helen's sister's partner has been sporting rather interesting facial hair especially for Christmas, and as their daughter Holly is away working in France (the first family Christmas she's missed), I'm including the pic here so she can see it!



Comments in the forum please!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Hope everyone has a great day, it's officially christmas now here in the UK!

Merry Christmas :)

For us at least - it's already Christmas day for you lucky Australians (and Russians, Iranians, etc etc)!

Dan from lambwatch kindly sent us some Christmas pics of Lottie - she's looking gorgeous! (click for a bigger version of all the pics)







I was supposed to be working today but in the morning the roads round here were treacherous, and as it was still snowing I called in and let them know I couldn't make it - thankfully Martin was very understanding! Here's pics of the bottom of our road:





And finally, a big thank you to all our visitors, whom without them we would not be here, may you all have a great Christmas and a fantastic New Year:


Click for a full size version.

Santa's nearly here! :-)

We can start to track Santa as he travels the world delivering presents!!

You can watch him in real time thanks to the people at Norad, the US and Canadian defence agency!

There's a countdown to the big event, and it's currently at 1 day 17 hours - yippeee!

Check it out here: www.noradsanta.org!

Rage Against the Machine are Christmas number 1!!

Well done everyone who took part!

I don't know if you've heard (and I'm afraid this only really applies to UK peeps), but there is an online campaign to get rap/rock band Rage Against the Machine to the Christmas number 1, in protest against the Simon Cowell drivel that is usually at the top spot at this time of year.

RATM are a brilliant band and stand up against inequality and misjustice (and are supporting Shelter, the UK homeless charity).

The song has some swearing in it, but it's a classic bit of rock and would be a great antidote to the normal sickly sweet ballads we have to suffer.

Please buy it from Amazon [click here] - it's only 29p!

Cheers, and Merry Christmas!

Here are some pics to annoy Scarlet because she has no snow!







On another note, I think the cam might be down at the moment - apologies - will get it back up as soon as possible...

But here's a pic of the hencam Christmas tree to cheer you up!

Hope you saw the snow falling earlier, it was very pretty (ooh it's just started snowing again!)

I was lucky my drive home wasn't too bad but poor Helen got stuck on icy roads 'over the tops' for over 2 hours, so she's not feeling that the snow is too festive at the moment!

I've been out to close up the coop to try and keep a bit of warmth in the nest boxes (it was 0°c earlier!) but Penny has tucked her head under her wing so it will hopefully be a bit warmer for her under there...