Letting Guineas Raise Their Young

The father is lavender, he is warming the babies in the cold wet grass this morning. They are a week old today or tomorrow, they spend their days out with the parents all day. It's amazing how well they travel, just eating grass seeds and bugs, all fourteen are healthy and doing well.

That's lovely!! We also have a family of 13! I was amazed and delighted to see that the male plays an active part in raising the chicks. I love them!

Your babies almost look the same colors as mine. I agree, in everything I have read, I don't remember anything about the father helping out, but he is right there feeding and watching over them!

Yes! At first he was outside, but the babies went through the fence trying to get to him Now they are all together and they stay in! I am also surprised that there are some white ones, all my guineas are grey. It looks like they have recessive white genes!

I kept reading about how guineas are bad mothers. But she's doing really well so far and the dad too! Yours are a very pretty colour!

Nice, I hear that they are either great parents or horrible... Thus the reason I choose to brooder them myself vs taking the risk...

irisshiller said:

Yes! At first he was outside, but the babies went through the fence trying to get to him

Now they are all together and they stay in! I am also surprised that there are some white ones, all my guineas are grey. It looks like they have recessive white genes!

I kept reading about how guineas are bad mothers. But she's doing really well so far and the dad too! Yours are a very pretty colour!

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Your light colored keets look like they may be Sky Blues which means that your Pearl Gray guineas do have some recessive genes which are the blue gene and the no dotting gene.

White keets are pure white and the white gene is not recessive. If a guinea has both white genes it is a white guinea and if it only has one white gene it is a pied guinea.

That's interesting, so they are not actually white but will turn darker later? I have some older keets that were hatched by a chicken, 2 of them are like that, I'll see if I can get a picture of them.. Can't have too many guineas!

This page gives a good overview of many keet colors vs their adult color...

http://www.guineafowl.com/fritsfarm/guineas/colors/

Thanks for that link, that's great info! I'm wondering if they could be lavender? They don't really look like the sky blue keets in the picture. They are very light but might have some brownish striping on the head. Also the older ones are very light - but they might actually have come from white guinea eggs ( I got some eggs from someone else). But the younger keets are all from the grey mum and dad. I will post some pictures later.

irisshiller said:

Thanks for that link, that's great info! I'm wondering if they could be lavender? They don't really look like the sky blue keets in the picture. They are very light but might have some brownish striping on the head. Also the older ones are very light - but they might actually have come from white guinea eggs ( I got some eggs from someone else). But the younger keets are all from the grey mum and dad. I will post some pictures later.

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Be sure to take close ups of the top of their heads since that area will show whether they will be fully pearled, partially pearled or no pearls. From your already posted pics, I could not see any striping on the light keet's heads which is why I thought they might be sky blues. The darker colored keets are pearl grays just like the parents.

Lavender keets will have a broad center stripe on their head with one thin line on either side of the broad stripe.

It is not uncommon for pearl gray parents to have lavender keets since it only requires that each parent have one recessive blue gene. Lavenders are fully pearled just as are the pearl grays. Lavenders can also come in different shades of darkness since there are lavenders and lite lavenders.

Opalines and porcelains can be very light colored to the point of looking almost white but they do show their dotting. Whites do not show any pearls at all. I have also seen buff dundotte males that looked white from a distance but on closer inspection do have a tannish color to them.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the different keet colors.

http://guineas.com/colorchart/

Good luck.