Guinea keet colors?

Tacampbell1973 said:

I want mine to do this, but they act like Im killing them when I pick one up to put him back in the pen withhis bretheren. They are stilll small enough to squeeze out the holes in the chicken wire when they have a mind to. maybe because there are 11 they are still more interested in each other. Althoughlike all of my chickens, they go bezerk over meal worms, so i guess when i have money i will have to get another bag and work with them some more,. they eat them out of my hand. seems like when its their choice to come to me their fine, but if i try to capture one they panic.come to think on it, my chickens are the same way, they eat meall worrms and hot dog chunks out of my hand, but i go to pick one up and they freak. there must besomething to this, sorry about all the typos and uncaps,just waking up

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Starkasm said:

I've noticed with every guinea they go through a stage of you're going to eat me. They grow out of it. Unless they're very used to being held, Guineas don't like to have their feet dangling. They "swim" as I call it and can claw you pretty good. Try sitting and grounding his feet on your lap, or gently holding them.

Oh and the meal worms!!! I had never bought those before til a few days ago. I bought them to grind up for the new quail we hatched. But boy do the guineas love them!!

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Tacampbell1973 said:

Hello again, crises of today is this,. I have been keeping the "keetlings"as I call them in a pen. The mini barn they live in is inside the pen. It is only temporary as it is only meant to hold two bantys or maybe one standard sized chicken (4 1/2 x 4 1/2 x maybe 4 ft tall). Anywho the chicken shed also opens up to this pen as it was originally for the chickens until they grew old enough to free range. Both structures are side by side almost and next to chicken shed/coop is my greenhouse. Got home from town today running errands and first thing I always do is take a head count of the babies. 10 out of 11. I am panicking and looking upand down for him. I hear him, sounds like he is under or on the coop but nothing. Finally found him wedged between the green house and coop, two feet off the ground wedged like a cork. knowing the guineas propensity to scream when in trouble I have no idea how long he has been there but no more than three hours, but still. Three hours of screaming and wriggling wore him out I'm sure. I had to manually pick up the coop, you know how you get superhuman strength when your children are in danger,and minikeet finally slid to the ground,. He was understandably exhausted but I fed and watered him and he/she is fine now, but I am still trying to get back to normal.Incidentally I have noticed that some of the keets have a white underwing and some don't. I noticed the same thing on their parents too but could never figure out which one had the white and which didinn;t. Is this any factor on male/female?

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Starkasm said:

Whew I'm so glad he was okay!! I was having a panic attack just reading this!!

I would guess something spooked him and he flew up! They don't always pay attention to where they fly if something gives them a scare. Is there anyway you could put chicken wire or netting there to stop anyone from doing it again?

As far as the white, I don't know. Some of our males have it and some don't. I don't know if it's just coincidence that our females don't but I know all our males don't. Our original 3, 1 male did one male didn't - one had mostly black feet and one kept a lot of his orange. I think some are just a little different. But I do know it's not a way to sex them because as I said, some of the males don't.

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