Good morning from Chicken Paradise — it’s me and Pen-chan, and the sky is blue again. Good morning, everyone!
Moo-chan goes to work
Today our rambunctious Moo-chan was put to work. “Dig!” Right away, Moo-chan went off to do something completely unrelated… and then started threatening me while digging (ha). So I stepped back to watch from a distance, and finally something got dug out.
Dolly on lawn duty
Dolly turned down an appearance today — no appearance fee, no show. Even so, she works really hard for us and keeps the areas where we’ve cut the grass nicely maintained. Look, she’s already trotted off over there. Dolly does everything at her own pace and wanders wherever she likes. She eats the fresh new shoots as they come up, which is a big help. Thank you, Dolly!
Battling the weed roots
Now it’s time to start working the garden area in earnest. Step one: pull out these grass roots. The ground is very hard, so I’m watering as I go and working at it little by little.
I had a cheering squad — the chickens, who had already dug up the soil around me. The orange one is Moo-chan, and over here is Sumi, who has a very high-pitched voice.
Got it! Here’s the root I pulled out, and it’s a big one. “Look, Taro, I got the root out!” No comment. Then one chicken came running out at top speed — was somebody chasing you? Are you okay? Just an accident. And that’s the end of today’s work.
Meet Okki-chan
Okki-chan was one of the first chickens I got. I thought, “Wow, she’s big,” so she became Okki-chan (ōkii means “big” in Japanese). She’s an Old English Game bird, a game breed used for cockfighting in America, and her color is called blue — it’s really a bluish grey.
When I first decided to start a chicken coop, a cousin of someone my teacher knew was raising lots of chickens and said we could have a few for free. I went to pick them up, and Okki-chan is one I chose.
Right after she arrived, though, she caused a big problem: she pecked a flockmate’s beak so hard it cracked. That bird is perfectly fine now, but it was quite a shock at first. Her breed isn’t really meant for laying, yet she lays an egg for us every day. Everyone loves Okki-chan!
Thank you so much for watching Chicken Paradise Hawaii. See you in the next video!