Guinea Babies Dying!!

[CayleeMarie03]

I just bought 5, day old guineas yesterday, and I already found 2 dead this morning, and 2 more can't walk. They have fresh water, and the area is warm. They are eating medicated chicken food. It is my first time ever owning any sort of guineas, I have only had, and raised chickens. The last baby is still doing good, running around, and eating and drinking fine, but the other two that can't walk seem sorta sickly they won't eat or drink and obviously cant move around, they can't even stand. So if you know anything about this could you please help me!

 

[mooneeks77]

This is my first year with guineas as well...... but I do know that everyone I have talked to including the gentlemen at the local feed store say that it is best for keets (baby guineas) to eat game bird starter as they need a considerably higher protien content in their feed than chickens do. I did a mix of Purina game bird starter and Purina flock rasier and my guines are doing great, they are almost 3 months old. Also I know that everyting I have read says to keep their brooder at about 90-95 the first week and drop it down by 5 degrees each week, but I found that my guineas always ran on the hot side. We had them in a big cardbox with the food and water at one end and the heat lamp at the other. The guineas seemed to hang out right in the middle, and each time I measured the temp for the first week I had them it was reading about 80 degrees or so, and the person at my local Wilco (where I got my keets) said that they had to turn the heat lamp off sometimes because they go too hot. Also, do you have them in? I know that they need a lot of ventilation. As I said before we kept ours in a big cardboard box and we covered ours with baking cooling racks. I know it sounds funny but they were just the right size to fit on top of the box and they were able to get plenty of air! I hope this helps... Good luck with the little guys!

 

[chickenmadness7]

I agree about the game bird starter though I'm feeding my keets half game bird starter and half chick feed, which puts the protein ratio at about 24%. Mine are 3 weeks old now. One thing I noticed very quickly with my keets is that 95 degrees the first week was way too hot for them. They were only happy when I lowered to 85 degrees at a few days old. Now at 3 weeks I have them at 75-80.