Uh oh... found an egg today! ... - A journal of sorts, from finding eggs to hatching them...... - Page 27

Oh dear I hate being sick.    take care of yourself. 

deb

I hope you are feeling better despite the curse that is daylight savings!  Personally, I feel hungover--and without even having stayed up late or done a single thing to deserve it!  However, we have happy keets.  The second little guy hatched and was in the bator yesterday morning (sorry for late pics, I decided to let him dry) and now the little ones have been introduces to their big brother.  Wow what a difference a little over a week can make!

They are just midgets compared to him!  The half-hidden one is a pied pearl, I'm pretty sure, and the one without pied markings is just pearl, right?  Which is just as well, cause they will be hard enough for me to part with as is.  If they were rare colors I couldn't do it, and the poor lady who's been waiting forever for her keets would be so sad!

And look what we found today!

Our first real pile of guinea eggs!  We just set six yesterday, that were laid in odd places as if they were a surprise, but the pied female who just started laying again a week ago was acting sly and we weren't finding her eggs.  Turns out she was hiding them in the woods in a bramble patch so I could scratch up my arms getting them out!  And I think she may have had help.  The whole flock was back there making a fuss around the nest for an hour plus, and when we thought they'd finally finished and tried to sneak closer, we saw our white female on the nest.  Really hoping that means we'll start finding more of these piles!  Woohoo!!!

Ahh, they're so sweet!  I can almost hear them!  In fact--!  Oh, wait.  That's mine.

These are super adorable, I'm not the least surprised you can't quit.  It's kinda like once you've opened a package of oreos, or dorritos, they just keep calling to you...why am I using food metaphors for keets, again?  Oh, yeah!  Cause they're so cute you could eat them!

Okay.  Enough with the bad jokes.  So, I didn't have any spare chcken eggs yesterday but I'd made some clay eggs and painted them guinea egg color.  After the guineas weren't looking I grabbed a couple of the clay eggs and some golf balls and swapped them out for their eggs.  And it seemed to work.  My hubby snuck close enough this afternoon to see that they'd layed two eggs there.  But, when I went to collect this evening, both the guinea eggs and all the clay eggs were gone!  The golf balls were still there.  It was only a few hours in the middle of the day between the two of us checking, with our dog having been out most the day (he keeps the place pretty clean of ground predators) so my conclusion is--they moved them.  Ist that even possible?  Or did a very quick but stupid predator come?  We did have predators try to steal one of our fake eggs once before, and he ran it off about four feet, then dropped it.  The thing had definite teeth marks.  We searched all around and found no shells or any clay eggs, no sign of eggs at all.  Do you think they could have moved them?

Now we will have to watch tomorrow and see where they hang out.  Silly guineas!!!

Bummer.  I was really hoping they'd just been a little too clever for me--since the alternative is waayy too clever bandits!  But, I suppose they will lay more.  I've thought about cooping them, but they don't lay til around two or three in the afternoon, so that's  a long time for them to stay inside.  And since they share the coop with our laying flock of chickens, that would mean nobody was free-ranging, and everybody was climbing over each other in the coop.  Unless I could figure out a way to let the chickens out but not the guineas...I might have to do that if their eggs keep getting stolen.  Unfortunately, I have to put our dog up each afternoon for a couple hours while I'm collecting kids from school, and I guess that's all the time the coons need.  In this case I'm not worried about neightbors--none are close enough to see into the center of our property and those eggs were well-hidden.

Wow, you are overrun!  I wondered where you were keeping all those keets...maybe a magic box that expands as needed to accomodate any number of keets?   Wouldn't that be nice?  I suppose if you insist I can take your extra eggs...I'll just pop over tomorrow and pick them up, shall I?   I won't urge you on, since I don't want to be one of those obnoxious enablers.  Instead I'll just sit back and wait for pics!  

I spent a LOT of worried hours over here on this board last Spring hatching Guineas (my first hatch of any kind, ever....THANKS PEEPSCA!  So far this Spring I have been over on the Quail board, as we put 50 Bobwhite eggs in the bator, again, a first time. Glad to report, all went well, and we have 34 beautiful 2day old BW quail making our lives miserable! 

Anyway, I got a ton of good advice over on the quail board but have missed my "guinea" friends.  I guess us Guinea lovers are a special breed.  My guineas are as sassy as ever, the owls attacked a week ago, and injured one and killed another.  I knew when it happened, I snapped out of sleep.....found the dying one lying there as I burst out the front door.  Amazing....you get soooo conflicted.....I used to love owls. 

COUNTRY CHICKEN....your guineas are laying?  I am just west of you, in Guilford County, is this a good indication I should start looking for eggs, or are you doing something special?? :) I swore I wouldnt care when my guineas started laying, since I'm hatching some other birds, but I take it back.

Congrats on your quail!  I raised quail of different kinds as a kid, and may some day again.  They are such graceful little creatures and cute as can be as chicks!

One pied female started laying in January, but not til the end.  She took a break for a few week in February, but has started up again and it looks like at least half the other girls have joined her.  These are 6-7 month old pullets, so maybe they are laying earlier cause they are younger and this is their first season.  It also might be helping them that we have chicks under a warming light in the barn, so there would be some spill over light.  Personally, I'm just grateful!  I hope yours start laying soon!