guinea fowl fertility rate

[GuineaFowling]

I have stopped my guinea hen from hatching eggs for a while now since her last few hatches were delayed and a lot of the babies died after the first pip. Her last hatch was early thus year. I didn't expect anything to hatch since my hens kept using her nest box to lay eggs in and the incubation period started a good 3 weeks before she even finished laying eggs for her clutch. Finally she went broody and one baby hatched. The baby went missing and after that she layed two more clutches that I got rid of. Luckily for me my guineas are super tame and are trained to lay in the coop so I don't have to search for a missing hen who decided to go broody. I blocked her nest box and she started laying eggs on the floor on the side of the hay bale in the coop. She really wants babies so in decided I would let her hatch them. What u don't know is if the eggs are fertile or not. I will candle them after 2 weeks of incubation to find out. My male isn't really into babies (has a history of attacking his offspring and even killed one) and I have not seen them mate or court. Keets say they are fertile. Now here's the catch, my guineas are 6 years old turning 7 in march. How high is the fertility rate for old birds? Maybe that's the reason why she had bad hatches for the past 2 years(also because my chickens were annoying and enjoyed incubating the eggs through the day and leaving them cold at night. I no longer have chickens).

Any thoughts?

 

[Tracydr]

My experience, when I had a large flock was very good fertility. I had a cheap incubator and hatched hundreds of chicks. Hardest thing is finding the eggs if they free range. They're aren't very good about sitting and all tend to lay in one nest. I sometimes found 50-60 eggs in the nest.

 

[GuineaFowling]

My guineas are trained to set and lay in the coop so I never had to worry about them laying elsewhere. How old are your guineas? Mine are six so I am worried the hatch rate will be low because of the fertility rate. I know in chickens the fertility rate gets pretty low at six.