Hello from Chicken Paradise Hawaii — blue sky again. Mint laid an egg the very moment I arrived and peeked in, so now she’s sitting there in a daze. Her body is still a bit upright, which makes it obvious she just laid.
Then I looked into the water container and found a guest: a cane toad. They’re poisonous, and they puff up round when threatened. I moved it outside.
Pruning the cucumbers
Today I pruned the cucumbers with Taro, Marron, the little black chick and the new one. Taro doesn’t know what to cut and nibbled leaves on his own, so he watched from outside. I used a method I once learned on YouTube: cut off the lower side shoots growing from the main stem. (I couldn’t find the main stem, so I just picked one.) Then I trimmed a few leaves for airflow. The cut leaves went to the chickens.
The plants have grown, so I tied up strings for them to climb. Dolly ate a lot of them earlier, so sadly we went from nine plants to five. The chicks come alive in the garden — even ones that were weak perk up — so I let them out there every day.
Welcome, Ponyo
This tiny chick is Ponyo. The people who found the chick had already chosen that name, so we kept it. Ponyo is probably about three days old. The finders went out of their way to find my contact information and ask us to take the chick, and I happily agreed. Ponyo was healthy from the start and gets along with everyone. Chicks grow up healthier with at least one companion, and luckily Chako and the little black chick with no name yet are about the same size. Now they all roll around the garden like marbles.
And the strawberries! One plant has a real, proper strawberry, with six more forming. In about a day, we can eat it.
Meet Pro Wrestler
True to her name, Pro Wrestler is big and strong and never loses a fight. She moves a little differently from other chickens, and her default pose is a wide, braced stance — like a wrestler. As a chick she was so big I wondered if she was a rooster, and she’s still about two sizes bigger than the others. And she doesn’t like people — she was out of breath after I chased her for this interview.
She’s an Easter Egger, and she lays a strangely round egg in a beautiful pale blue. Her face is a bit scary, but her eggs are lovely.
Thank you for watching Chicken Paradise! See you in the next episode.