For our 100th video, here’s how I started keeping chickens.
A chick in the mud
About four years ago, on a rainy June 25th, I took out the garbage and suddenly felt I had to walk behind the apartment. There in the mud was a tiny chick, close to dying. I shouted “It’s a chick!”, ran home and warmed it up — and it miraculously recovered. That was Pen-chan. She sat with her feet sticking out in front, and her belly was white. “You look like a penguin!” — so she became Pen-chan.
From an apartment to a school farm
After a month, my parents said we couldn’t keep a chicken in the apartment. Knowing chickens aren’t treated well in Hawaii, I couldn’t hand her to strangers, and zoos didn’t want a wild chicken. As a last resort I asked the school I attended, which had plenty of land, and they casually said yes — so I began keeping chickens there as part of an agriculture class.
Pen-chan’s first hen friends came from someone breeding fighting roosters, and they were fierce — poor Pen-chan! Two of those first birds are still with us: Okki-chan and Brownie. Interested in poultry farming since fourth grade, I also bought all 24 egg-laying chicks left unsold in the box — our big Easter Egger hens, like Turmeric and Cutie. Each year’s lost-chick season brought more rescues, from me and from others, and soon we had 83 chickens.
Then, months before graduation, I was told the chickens were too noisy and given two weeks to leave. After a panicked search, we found this land through an acquaintance of an acquaintance. I signed the lease on day 10, we built a coop in two days, and moved the chickens on day 14.
My goal for the future
Hawaii has countless wild chickens, bringing crowing from 4 a.m. (or all night), droppings, and mess from people feeding the cute chicks. Brought by the first Polynesian settlers, they’re seen as invasive and treated harshly, and some are used for cockfighting.
After four years of thinking, here’s my answer: put nest boxes where wild chickens gather and collect the eggs so no chicks hatch. Within six months to a year, older birds pass away naturally, and we catch and care for the rest. Some think it’s extreme, but the government just catches and kills them; I believe this is far better. If it works, the problem could be resolved within five or ten years.
To do this myself, I started an LLC named after our channel, since a nonprofit takes six months to a year to set up. It’s a one-person company that makes no money yet. Please cheer us on — I’ll keep at it!