Your Webmaster
Well, as we launch this new website, I suppose I should introduce myself. You may have a need to get in touch with me from time to time, and it is nice to put a face together with the "webmaster" title in an effort to get a friendly dialog going.

My name is Ken Eastep, and I am new to the club. I am a graphic designer and photographer by trade, and I have volunteered my time to re-design and keep the club's site up to date. Our website is at a bare bones minimum at this time, but I have aspirations to jazz it up a bit with new content that features anything that is of interest to you. My idea is to make this section of the website as informative as possible, on any subject you want. It can be anything from a feature story on a member's aviary, to a photo essay from your recent visit to China while seeking the origins of Red Golden Pheasants. It's up to you really. But I need your help to make this happen, so I'm putting out the call for you to get me some content!!! Send me your ideas and we'll get it on the site. . . . and so here is a little bit about me:

As a boy, I had developed an interest in incubating chicken eggs for my seventh grade science project. With some direction from my science teacher, I set about writing a cover letter and requesting information from as many college poultry departments, commercial hatcheries and supply houses as I could find. Soon, I was thrilled to see the literature and catalogs start rolling in with each day's mail delivery -- "Beginning of Life" from Virginia Polytechnic Institute, "Quail and Pheasant Propagation" from the Wildlife Management Institute, and "Electric Specialties for Farm and Factory" from Lyon Rural Electric Company were just some of the literature titles that began to fill my head with ideas. I formulated a game plan and set out to build my first incubator with the help of my grandfather who was a carpenter. I aquired a clutch of eggs from the University of Maryland's Poultry department, and was overwhelmed when I had a near perfect 11 out of 12 chicks hatch twenty-one days after setting the eggs. I was personally responsible for bringing those chicks to life! I was hooked on the hobby, and was soon hatching ducks, quail and others. My friends thought it was fun to watch them hatch, and they thought I was cool for having such and exotic hobby. I remained faithful to the hobby until college, and then didn't return to it again until recently.

Move forward about forty years to 2002 when I revived my interest in aviculture. When I moved into my current home in Ijamsville, MD, I finally had the room to build the aviary that I always wanted and thought, wouldn't it be great to finally hatch and keep pheasants. They were the one type of bird that I had not yet hatched, and there was a perfect opportunity to do this where I could time the hatch to occur at a large party I was hosting. There would be many children in attendance who would like to watch the hatch. The problem was that I no longer had an incubator. I did, however, have a building plan for a beauty (see photos) that I had saved from all of the literature that I had collected. I had always wanted to build this one, but never had the skills when I was younger. It had glass viewing ports on all four sides for the children to watch through during the hatch and worked perfectly and to great success.

After my Red Golden pheasants hatched, I set out to building my aviary to house the birds. I had no plan really, just some ideas and a pile of used lumber that I had harvested after helping a neighbor re-surface his deck. I just started winging it and built my aviary off the ground to keep the birds on wire. I devised an easy way to clean the system by angling plastic corrogated roofing panels so that I can hose the mess right off and down into a gutter system below which empties into a french drain. Don't laugh some of you, but I'm only keeping three birds right now. With my schedule, I don't have time for any more than that. But I still have greater aspirations. . . Someday.

OK. Enough about me. . . .get me YOUR story!

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