Hello from Chicken Paradise Hawaii! Someone gave us some apples, so I’m handing them out — and everyone is squabbling. Please don’t fight, there are plenty! Chickens can eat them whole, but then everyone would need one each, so I’m roughly cutting them up.
Blue, named for her slightly blue-gray feathers, has stopped sitting on eggs and come out to eat. It has been extremely hot lately, and we have more ducks, so the water disappears fast. I added another five-gallon waterer.
Eight guinea fowl
We used to have three white guinea fowl, but I wasn’t very good at keeping them, and gradually we lost them until only one was left. I’ve learned a lot since then, and one alone is lonely, so we were given eight more. Guinea fowl are handy because they eat the kinds of bugs that harm animals, like fleas and mites.
Our new arrivals
Someone with a small farm on the other side of the island changed their plans and wanted to replace their birds. I said, personally, that I’d take any chickens they didn’t need, and this is what I came home with. First, a handsome rooster of unknown breed, black with red markings, like a giant version of our Iruka. He wasn’t handled much, so he isn’t tame.
Then three roosters who look like Silkies. They lived together in a cage about a meter square, and even here they never leave their own invisible square, moving around as one. I’ve never seen a group like it, so I call them Cerberus. There are also two Delawares, a stocky, wide breed kept for both eggs and meat; big, but not very strong. Yamabuki is a mix of Orpington, Silkie and who knows what: the owner wanted good broody mothers, so crossed Orpingtons and Silkies, and the roosters weren’t needed. Another rooster is the son of a wonderful rooster on that farm who looked after everyone, like our Heart, yet this one is timid. So toughness may not be inherited!
Some hens came too: a long-legged beauty, a fluffy-headed Orpington-Silkie mix with a rose comb, and the three Orpington-Silkie sisters you may have seen in the Shorts. None of them are tame yet.
Under the table
Under the table in the little ones’ room, the broody hens have clumped into one giant ball. Every day I toss them out to eat, and they don’t care a bit. Keeping them company is André, whose name comes from a silly pun: say “ondori” (Japanese for rooster) in a funny accent and it turns into “André.” And our black-nosed cat, Syrup, was trying to climb in where there was no room.
Thank you for watching Chicken Paradise Hawaii! See you next time.