Hello from Chicken Paradise — it’s me and Pen-chan. Cloudy today — easy working weather. Today’s snack is dried mealworms, and everyone was so excited I handed them out right away.
Meet Shi-chan
Shi-chan is an Easter Egger, a kind of chicken that lays colorful eggs, like Easter eggs. Her name comes from narenareshii, which means overly friendly — “Narenareshii-chan” was too long, so it became Shi-chan. She’s one of a big batch of birds I bought at once. Chickens raised together in large numbers often don’t get used to people, but for some reason she’s very attached to me. She even comes over to peek inside bags.
She turned three in December, so she’ll be three and a half soon. She lays eggs along with her siblings, and her own eggs are a deep sky blue — pretty eggs that don’t quite match her face!
Tomatoes take over the plan
Look, everyone — the tomatoes have sprouted, and lots of them! Since so many came up, I’m putting off planting corn in the garden for now and making room for tomatoes instead. To dig this area, I bought a hoe at a home improvement store. It was about 3,000 yen. Pricey! The chickens are complaining that their snack budget just shrank.
Dolly’s panoramic eyes
Today’s Dolly topic is sheep eyes. In sheep and goats, the dark part of the eye is a long, sideways rectangle. They’re said to see a wide image, like a panorama. And because their eyes are set so far apart, it’s no exaggeration to say they can see almost 360 degrees. So wherever you approach Dolly from, she senses you or sees you and turns around. Right now, though, she’s busy eating grass.
Pinning down the fence
Next, ground staples. Along this net, if you lift the bottom, chickens slip right out. To stop that, you hammer a staple in over the net and it holds the net to the ground. Tap, tap… it won’t go in — a rock. Move it. Oops, it bent! There are hopelessly many rocks. Finally one goes in, level with the ground, so the net can’t move. Now to repeat this about a hundred times.
This is a Trade Wind Red hibiscus, and this even redder one is a red leaf hibiscus, with red leaves. It has buds, so I think it will bloom soon. And this is our sad strawberry — Dolly found it on about the first day and ate it, so there’s no soil left and I’d like to add some. Then I watered everything with a hose full of holes.
Thank you for watching Chicken Paradise Hawaii. See you in the next video!