- Today, we are doing something in the pond
that I didn't think I would do for a while.
You guys remember, I have two little koi
that I rescued for $3 each from Petco.
I think someone just didn't want them
and then I went in and picked some up.
And I also have some minnows in the epic pond,
but we had a little visit from Greg at Aquascapes.
Who's actually the founder of Aquascapes,
which is the company that put in the pond for me.
And I've been told that someone's coming
to deliver some koi.
Wait, who's this?
Who's this?
- It's Chad with California Waterscapes.
How are you?
- [Kevin] What's up Chad?
- Good to see it.
- [Kevin] How's it going?
- It's a surprise.
We got half a dozen koi here.
- [Kevin] Look at these guys.
- [Chad] Some beautiful, colorful koi.
- [Kevin] Wow.
- [Chad] That will keep your-
- [Kevin] I am so stoked.
- Petco koi little bit of a company then.
- [Kevin] Little upgrade, so to speak.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- [Kevin] Well, why don't we take 'em over to the pond.
- Let's go check it out. - Let's do it.
- I hear it, I haven't seen this.
- [Kevin] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm actually curious 'cause you,
so your company's called California Waterscapes.
- It is. Yeah.
- [Kevin] And you do a lot in the world of ponds.
- So yeah, we supply pond equipment all over LA, you know.
To different contractors and bring them Aquascapes equipment
'cause they're all the way out on the east coast.
So it's good to get it here
on the the west coast too as well.
- [Kevin] Perfect.
- Look at this big rock.
Pulling me right out on this rock, right?
- So this rock was from Sarah Bendrick and I.
I don't know if you know her,
but we picked this huge-
- I'ma drop right now right here.
- Are you really? - Yeah.
- Yeah.
We picked this huge rock out and I feel like it's become
the flagship piece here in the Epic pond.
- All right. So here we got some pretty cool koi.
- Yeah.
- We got some basically American domestic koi.
These aren't like your Japanese imported type koi
but I mean, they're gorgeous.
As you can see, they got amazing colors to them.
200 bucks with some koi, you can put it in there.
- [Kevin] Wow.
- They grow.
I like getting 'em when they're about six inches
up to 12 inches big.
Letting 'em kind of grow into their surroundings,
get acclimated.
But let's dip these in there
and they get acclimated to the water here for a while.
- [Kevin] Yeah. So is that the process?
- Yeah.
We wanna leave it in there for about 10 minutes
or fit 15 minutes.
Let the water temperature adjust.
'Cause this is a little warmer,
it's been in the truck for about an hour or two.
- Yeah.
- So we wanna let the water temperatures adjust
and then we'll slowly introduce
some of the pond water in there and let 'em go.
Koi are super durable fish.
They're calm, they're bottom feeders.
I mean, people there's so many mysteries about 'em.
They live over 100 years, 200 years.
They don't even really know.
(bright music)
- [Kevin] Yeah. Wow.
- [Chad] And their colors will change as they get older.
Like the orange will start to take off.
You'll see it and it's got like these little speckles
of gold and silver in there.
That'll start to kind spread. - [Kevin] Wow.
- So it's really cool then. - Amazing.
- [Chad] All right. Should we let 'em go?
- Look at these two. They're like fires.
Here and-
- [Cameraman] Oh the moment.
- [Chad] Time to go.
- [Kevin] What are they gonna do?
- Go back a little right in the middle-
- [Kevin] They don't wanna leave.
They don't wanna leave.
There we go.
- [Chad] There we go, man.
(bright music)
- [Kevin] Okay Chad, thank you so much.
- [Chad] You're welcome. My pleasure.
- I'm so stoked about this.
- Yeah.
I love to,
man, I love even just coming along
and seeing some of the office gig guys
their team and their work that they use.
So inspirational.
I love taking little bits of what Ed does and things,
try to put it in our job.
- [Kevin] Good play. Thank you, Chad.
- You're welcome. My pleasure, it's beautiful-
- Check Chad out on YouTube, guys.
We'll put it in the description.
So we just got the amazing koi delivery.
We're letting them acclimate,
we're letting them hang out for a little bit.
And I got another delivery yesterday
of this feeder that I've been wanting to try out
for a while.
So Matt, over at Carolina Coops
which is who helped build our coop,
in fact did the whole coop, I didn't really help at all.
But he recommended this coop works feeder.
And so what's cool about it is,
first of all I'll show you how it comes.
It kinda looks like an alien spacecraft of sorts.
And it's got these legs that you stand up,
and then you have these ports at the bottom,
these little red things.
And that's where the chickens can feed from.
Because you know, we raise these guys from baby chicks
but they're a little bit larger than that now,
which you'll see.
And I think I want a solution
that doesn't require me to fill up the feeder
basically every single day.
So let me put this together and then I'll bring it in there
and we'll dump in some of this feed.
So each leg has one, two, three, four, five, six
different extensions as your chickens get a little bit older
and they can reach.
These little girls are young,
so I think I'm just gonna keep it on the lowest one
and just shove these up in here.
(bright music)
That's it.
All we need to do now is just bring it in.
We'll put in our Grubbly feed
and see what the chickens think.
All right.
So let's bring this in, see what our hens think of it.
I don't know if that's gonna be the final place I put it,
but for now it's fine.
So this is what I was feeding them with
which is your little baby chick feeder.
You can get for like $2 at the store.
Certainly it works, it's pretty annoying.
You can see they've spilled it all over the place.
This raises the food higher off the ground,
less likely they're going to poop it,
less likely they're gonna knock it over.
And quite frankly, it's just easier.
You can dump this entire baby chick mix in here.
I could have put another entire one.
And what you see is it just shows up
right at the bottom here.
And if you want,
you can even cover up some of these portholes.
And while they're getting acclimated,
I'm gonna talk to you about another change
that I wanna make in here.
And that really is just the activation
of the water bar from Carolina Coops.
So this was our little baby chick watering mechanism
which of course is really prone to them
throwing dirt in it, pooping in it.
If it just runs out really quickly.
And so what we've done
is I've tightened up some of these fixtures here.
The water bar's actually active.
So it has these red little nipples connected to the PVC
and they just need to get used to the fact
that that's where their water's coming from.
And so I've, oh look, they're getting curious.
They're getting curious coming around this side.
Hey girls.
It seems like the hens just wanna run over and inspect.
And look, this seems like they're oh,
the Rhode Island Red just figured out the water bar.
Just figured out the water bar.
So I'm pretty sure if I remove this,
and they see each other,
at least some of them go over to the water bar,
they should be able to figure out
that that's where their water's coming from from now on.
So what this has now done, is it basically has bought me
the ability to not manage my food or water here in the coop
for at least a week or more,
given that these hens are bringing themselves
into the hen house at night, putting themselves to bed,
and taking themselves out.
At least right now, only in the indoor run.
I don't have an outdoor run set up.
So if I was to go on vacation let's say for a week,
I would feel very confident that these hens are safe,
they're fed and they're watered.
The only thing that's left here
is this little bit of chick grade
which I can leave in this bowl.
They don't really seem to mess with it too much,
they only use it when they need it.
So looks like they have yet to figure out this feeder.
I'm pretty confident they will.
I'm blocking it right now and they're a little scared of me
in their teenage years.
But I did want to give you guys an update on their progress.
So as you can see, they're a lot bigger.
They're really in the full on pullet stage of their life.
I think they're at least two months old now,
maybe coming just up on two months.
I think I got them in late February, February 23rd.
So we're coming up just on that two month anniversary.
And our smallest little girl here, little Lavender,
is really sizing up.
And if I try to pick her up
she's probably not gonna like it.
We'll see.
Come here up.
Nope. She does not wanna do it.
But what we'll do is we'll just let them eat.
I'll introduce you to them again.
We have Gucci, the Gold Laced Wyandotte,
we have the Silver Laced Wyandotte right there, unnamed.
Oh, little commotion.
We have Butta,
who's easily the biggest and the fattest hen in the bunch,
which is a gold or sorry, a Buff Orpington
which typically is one of the more friendly breeds.
Usually at the lower side of the pecking order,
my understanding.
She does not like being picked up at all,
until you're done picking her up.
Then she'll just stay there forever.
But she hates being picked up.
Whereas Gucci, who is typically a breed
that I think doesn't wanna be picked up as much
doesn't seem to mind as much.
Look, this is what they end up doing.
Look at little Lav.
So little Lav was picked on a little bit.
'Cause she was a week and a half later.
All these other hens were raised at the same time,
Lav I got a little bit later, and she was picked on.
She was looking a little scraggly, a little fluffy,
and I think she's really come into her own now.
She's got this kind of ghostly vibe to her
with this grayish coat.
And I don't know.
Something about her. I think she's got an interesting vibe.
And then we've got the Cream Legbar.
This one's really interesting
because they have that little mohawk I suppose.
And I thought it would look kind of weird,
I thought it'd be weirded out by it,
but I think she's really started to look very pretty
especially in her feathers, in her breast area
it's a different color
and it kind of goes back into this darker brown
that I really like the look of.
So we'll see how they do.
I'm really curious, will they get into this coop work system
which I'm a big fan of?
I think they're on the water bar.
Right now they're just cleaning up some scraps
that they've spilled from the old feeder.
Till next time guys, good luck in the garden,
and keep on growing.
(tender music)