Good morning! Piccolo is surrounded by hens and guarding the shed today. The ducks are all getting huge, and there’s something funny about the way they move. The chickens are eating in their safe zone, and the roosters are actually sleeping in the roosters’ beds. Someone found a nice spot. Lately we have more pigeons with the same pattern — I’ll introduce them another time.
Taro’s foot care
Taro is big, but he can’t look after his own feet, so I’m doing it for him. Look at these big feet. The scales on a chicken’s legs get old and grow out like fingernails, and then the top layer can come off. You can see a neat line where it separates.
It’s a bit like a cat’s claws: new scales keep growing underneath. If the top layer doesn’t come off for a very long time, it hardens like concrete, and the legs get hard to bend and walking gets difficult. So the chickens are happy when I peel a little of it off now and then. A chicken around two years old will probably have lots of layered-up scales like this.
In the wild, chickens normally pick the old scales off themselves with their beaks — of course, there are no humans in the wild. But some birds don’t know how, or aren’t very good at it, so many end up with scales only halfway off. That’s why I peel scales whenever I have a spare moment. It doesn’t hurt, so most of them wait fairly quietly. But there are so many scales that they complain when it takes too long.
Some chickens love eating the peeled scales — good nutrition, I suppose. Pen-chan, though, would never eat something so shabby. And Taro, since you’re big, your scales are big too. Someone in the back is squawking at us.
A new garden helper
While I was mowing the grass, this little guy showed up: a praying mantis! I’ve been wishing for one for ages, so I’m thrilled. Please take on the job of catching pests in the vegetable garden.
Pool time
Pool! We changed it to fresh water, but ducks get it dirty so fast. They gathered one after another to try to get in — but only one fits at a time. It’s a little small. Basil, you too! It looks like fun anyway. How does it feel?
Thanks for watching Chicken Paradise! See you in the next episode.