Guineas Galore - The Continuing Population Explosion!
We had another surprise this morning. A couple of guinea hens showed up for the morning feeding with eight new little keets bobbing along behind them. They are obviously recently hatched, and easily lost in the tall grass - which is why I took a picture of them while they were on bare dirt!
This is the fourth batch of keets to hatch out this year. The first two only ended up with two survivors from each group. The third group has three adults watching the keets, instead of the usual pair. They’ve managed to keep all fourteen – so far at least!
They were out in the front yard dust bathing this afternoon.
They have a pretty good system, with two adults watching the little ones all the time, while the third stands guard.
They were enjoying themselves immensely until Spot the cat came too close, then the Guard Guinea screeched it was time to move on out!
At this moment, we have 14 adult guineas, and 26 keets, for a grand total of 40 fowl! Oh my! I don’t think we really need that many. If all these newcomers survive, we may need to sell off a few guineas. They’re great for eating bugs, especially ticks, but 40 guineas???
It might be just a little too much of a good thing.
Labels: guineas
posted by Rural Writer @ 5:25 PM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
What a wonderful surprise! Forty--you are blessed!
We need guinea help! We bought eight young guineas in April. We kept them in the hen house and they would return to roost in the evening. We began to lose one guinea per day. They would either disappear or we would find their remains. We have two left. They seem to be a pair. One stopped returning to the roost at night. We decided she had an egg nest. After several days she began returning to the roost again. Now she is staying out in the tall grass again. The other comes in at night without her but during the day seems to stay near her. Their names are Pat and Milton but we are only assuming the larger one is a male. Anyway, we also bought 19 guinea eggs and put them under one of our broody hens. A few of the eggs disappeared but the hen finally hatched 11 keets. Each morning another one would be gone until finally something got the last. Any ideas and/or observations. We're successful with our chickens but dreadful guinea raisers and I just love the guineas. Glad to find your blog!
Well, if you noticed, we lost a powerful lot of guinea keets - all but 2 out of the first couple of groups of around 14. There are a lot of predators that will munch up on them - hawks, owls, raccoons, foxes, etc. Snakes will also eat the eggs out of the nests. We tried keeping one group locked up and something got in and killed the keets. It helps when the parents get a little more experience, but it seems like there is a high loss rate with guineas. All I can say is to keep trying!
Post a Comment
<< Home