Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2008 21:27:15 GMT -5
We have a child's old wooden play pen in our guinea house. Last year a guinea had a huge clutch of eggs hidden under some bushes and hatched them. The problem was that we could never get them to come inside the house at night and the mom got picked off and we ended up with only about half the babies that matured. This year they have laid 3 large piles of eggs inside the play pen which is on the ground. We put chicken wire around the sides to keep the babies in when they are born. Now we have found that one of our hens has decided to set on one of the piles so there are two guineas setting on their respective piles and there is a guinea "look out" that hangs inside there too. Not sure if they trade off setting duties or that one is just the guard. We are really hoping to get these to hatch because we occasionally lose one to the road and want to keep up their numbers. We are hoping since they will hatch them inside that we can keep them safer until they are able to follow their parents around the property better. When guinea babies are very young the parents make them follow them everywhere and we think some of them don't keep up and then get lost and eventually end up eaten by other things. So we are hopeful to have a better hatch this year. We have people occasionally stop by and ask to buy some so it would be nice to be able to populate our area with more guineas. We try to encourage people to keep guineas for bug and tick control. The white one on the right is the guard.
Finally!!!!!!!!! We have 5 new baby keets. That's all we can see so far without making the moms nuts. There are 3 adults sitting inside the play pen and the hen is still hanging in there too. We are hoping more hatch. We have some friends that lost some so we want to help replace theirs and we also need at least 10 for ourselves as we lose an occasional one. I talked to the guy we are getting our turkey poults from and he said that he has not had as many of his guineas hatch this summer either and said that he thinks it had to do with the late spring. I'll get pics of the new babies when they start coming out of the house.
Just last night our neighbor said that a weasel got in and killed all of her new baby keets she had just purchased. Just left them all dead. They were in a cage inside her green house but the weasel was still able to get in and kill them.
Janet
Finally!!!!!!!!! We have 5 new baby keets. That's all we can see so far without making the moms nuts. There are 3 adults sitting inside the play pen and the hen is still hanging in there too. We are hoping more hatch. We have some friends that lost some so we want to help replace theirs and we also need at least 10 for ourselves as we lose an occasional one. I talked to the guy we are getting our turkey poults from and he said that he has not had as many of his guineas hatch this summer either and said that he thinks it had to do with the late spring. I'll get pics of the new babies when they start coming out of the house.
Just last night our neighbor said that a weasel got in and killed all of her new baby keets she had just purchased. Just left them all dead. They were in a cage inside her green house but the weasel was still able to get in and kill them.
Janet