Guinea fowl person
In the Brooder
Let me just start by saying this has been a really difficult batch. My guineas decided to sit on their own eggs and instead of confiscating the eggs to my incubator like I usually do, I let the girls hatch out their own babies. Unfortunately, I was out of town when the keets hatched and though I had family watching on the birds, I don't think they caught the fact that my guineas were refusing to feed the keets (there was food right next to the next as well as a ways out that the keets could reach). By the time I returned, the keets were 5 days old and still looked like they were a day old. I took away the keets but still ended up having 10 keets die on me from starvation. After that, my birds seemed to stabilize. They are now closer to 8 or 9 days old now and I decided to count how many I have. When I counted them, I realized that about 15 have really bad diarrhea and some of those also have their eyes shut by some white, watery discharge. I took them away, cleaned off their bottoms, and put them in a separate brooder. I also cleaned and disinfected my other brooder before putting my healthy chicks and keets back in it. None of the chicks look affected at all and all of the sick keets aren't acting depressed. They are happy and moving about like they're healthy. There also seems to be nothing respiratory involved. I did find one keet dead yesterday with a poopy butt and assumed it was pasty butt that I missed, but now I'm not so sure. However, what should I do? How should I treat them and ensure my other healthy babies don't get sick? Did the guineas' failure at hatching them cause this somehow? I've been hatching out keets for 6 years and have never had such a disastrous batch of guineas before. Thank you for any help and advice!
