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April 30th, 2010
In my quest to integrate our birds with our garden I decided it was time that they were confined to two areas of the garden. The problem was that the two areas that they needed access to, the chicken house area and the duck pond area, are on two different levels and separated by a footpath. The obvious solution was a tunnel so I set about digging, unsure as to how well birds cope with tunnels. It turns out they cope really rather well.
October 7th, 2009
It’s easy to convert your chicken house to be fully automated and the result is a pet that pays for itself with eggs yet takes next to no daily care.
I used the VSB automatic chicken house door system with a 24hr timer and three sliding doors connected by pulleys. One door was for the chickens, one for the ducks and a third closed off a gravity fed feeding chamber.
To provide fresh water for the duck pond and the drinker I used a Hozelock Ac1+ automatic watering module.
I was then able to monitor the entire set up from anywhere in the world via the internet thanks to a Y-cam wireless infrared webcam mounted on a diy swiveling base made from bits I had found lying about.
My decision to try and make our chickens and ducks fully automated came just before we headed off for a three week holiday. We decided that rather than paying someone to come each day we would invest the money in fully automating them with automatic doors, an on-demand feeder, fresh water and a diy swiveling web-cam to keep an eye on it all . Since taking the plunge, the system has operated flawlessly for over a year without even needing the batteries changed so I thought it was worth sharing how I transported our birds to Chicken house Nirvana. Read on to find out how I tackled it.
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