Good morning from Pen-chan and me. What a blue sky! This is Pineapple — and yes, he is definitely a rooster. Yet there he was, sitting on a blue egg laid by our hen Tease-chan. The camera startled him and he ran off.
A wild nest and the miracle of hatching
Across the little road by our farm there’s a thicket, and inside it I found a wild chicken’s nest with nine eggs. A hen lays one egg a day, but she doesn’t start sitting right away. She waits until she has laid about 10 to 15, then warms them all at once. Until then, the eggs sit at air temperature and won’t turn into chicks.
Once she starts sitting, all the eggs develop at the same pace, so the chicks hatch on the same day — such a clever system. Chicken eggs hatch in about 21 days. So if a hen lays 14 eggs, the first one may wait more than a month from laying to hatching, and it still hatches just like the others.
Caterpillars and a walking date
Swallowtail caterpillars have hatched on our calamansi! Two so far, with more eggs here and there. On the broccoli, the cabbage white caterpillars have grown big — a few holes in the leaves, but so cute.
Taro and Kiwi, childhood friends, were out on a walking date. Most hens don’t like Taro, but Kiwi loves him, and although she usually runs from other roosters, Taro is the exception. Taro was scratching hard for food: when a rooster finds some, he calls the hens over, and hens tend to reward a good provider. He’s not very good at it yet. Keep trying, Taro!
Dolly also got her favorite haole koa leaves today. You could hear her crunching away.
Meet Fujiko
Fujiko is named after Fujiko Mine from Lupin the Third: sexy, strong-willed, and does whatever she likes.
She came from a shop that sells chickens and feed. Behind the shop they keep wild chickens that had to be caught after complaints in the area, and sell them as food for 500 or 1,000 yen each. Hens were 500 yen, so I bought three, and Fujiko was one of them. At first she screamed so hard I worried she would keel over, so being able to touch her now is a small miracle — though she’s still feisty and picks fights.
I chose her for her comb, a rose comb, bumpy like a flower. Wild chickens usually have bare legs, but one of her ancestors was probably a feather-legged breed, so Fujiko has fluffy feathered feet.
Thank you for watching Chicken Paradise! See you in the next episode.