Guinea talk.

[boucher814]

I am going to start this thread. I hope people join in with me if not oh well it was worth a shot. On this thread, we can talk about Guineas as questions we may have ect.

Please post pics of your birds.

There are rules tho........ Only two tho.........

1. No fighting. A good friendly debate will be ok tho.

2. HAVE FUN AND ENJOY.

 

[Dmontgomery]

BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT

Mr. and Mrs. Gary (Gertrude) Guinea announce the birth of their nine new keets hatched on 5/29/2018.

Babies will be named Gabe, Gwen, Gus, Gracie, Gordon, Ginny II, Gil, Gabby, and Gladys.

After 2 years of trying and over 100 eggs layed, Gertrude was finally able to hatch out some keets! She started setting on 5/1 with a clutch of 26. 10 hatched yesterday and 9 have survived. She was in a nest elevated about 8” off the ground. He babies kept falling/jumping out so she finally got down this afternoon. We took the remaining eggs and placed them under several broody chickens in the coop. We’ll see what happens, but if only these 9 live, we will be extremely happy.
I placed some 8’ long 1x8 boards around them to confine them a little. I’ll replace them with wider boards tomorrow until I can build a 3’ tall pen in the coop later this week. In the event she wanders off and leaves them behind, my brooder is ready to go at a few minutes notice.
I went to town today to pick up gamebird starter/grower but got sidetracked with my granddaughter. I’ll go back tomorrow for feed and electrolyte mix.
Anything else I need to know to raise our first keets?

 

[yoopergirl1211]

Hi everyone! Hope everyone is doing well! My guineas are all grown up and hilarious. I think I ended up with 4 purple boys and 1 purple girl. The two younger ones are 1 lavender boy that is pretty much alone because the girl he was raised with switched to other flock. Not sure how to get him to join the other flock so he's not alone with chickens all the time. She is a little different. Her neck has the same purple color as the royal purple ones but has way more spotting.

 

[Dmontgomery]

Probably the only photo I will ever be able to get clearly showing all 14 keets with Gertrude. Dang they are quick!

I let them out to free range this afternoon for the first time. Gary did a great job of bringing up the rear to herd any stragglers along.

She took them all back in by 6:30. Thanks to everybody for all the support and advice.

 

[Dmontgomery]

A little while ago I witnessed something incredible, at least to me. The 2 keets we had left with the hen to raise, walked out from under her and walked across the coop to the enclosure where their real mother and siblings are located. The boards are high enough that they could not see Gertrude, but they could hear her calling to the other keets. The little keets were hopping up as high as possible trying to get in to the enclosure. Gertrude walked up to the boards and looked over at them as if to say, “how did you get out?”.
The hen that originally hatched them didn’t even seem to notice they were gone. I guess she figures she still has other eggs to hatch out so no big deal. Anyway, we put the 2 keets in with Gertrude so now she has 14.
It looks like at least one more egg under a hen is pipping!

 

[MartinsPoultry]

My one sassy blue keeter, one of two but this one is clingy to me.

 

[pattyhen]

Here they are at the front door they want back in the house.

 

[pattyhen]

Thanks everyone for the kind words it just breaks my heart to even think about them.

Martins I don't know how you keep up with that many birds. I know if I lived in the country I would have alot more too. We have 8 chickens, 8 ducks and 2 guineas of course.

I hope everyone has a nice 4th of July holiday. It is raining here today so maybe that will put a damper on some of the fireworks.

Here is a pic of Spiderman and Mary Jane setting on their dads lap. I took this about a month ago.

 

[R2elk]

I finally can tell the different calls for my royal purple guineas! But.... I can't keep track of who's making them lol. I only hear one girl at a time so maybe only 1 out of 5.... but my young grey and lavender both sound like girls. So if I have one purple, one lavender, and one grey females and all purple boys I'll get lots of lavenders? With some purples? I haven't looked into guinea genetics yet. I want one of every color someday!

The research on Royal Purples is too incomplete to really predict what you will get. The claim is that a Royal Purple is the same dominant gray gene as the Pearl Gray's dominant gray gene. The difference that is known between a Pearl Gray and a Royal Purple is the Pearl Gray has the dominant full dotting gene while the Royal Purple has the recessive to full dotting but dominant over no dotting, partial dotting gene. The Lavender has two recessive blue genes and at least one dominant full dotting gene.

I create Royal Purples by breeding a Coral Blue hen (two recessive blue genes and a partial dotting gene) with a Chocolate cock (two recessive buff genes, two dark shade variance genes and a partial dotting gene). Due to results from repeated breedings it has been shown that this particular Coral Blue hen has one partial dotting gene and one no dotting gene. Royal Purples produced in this manner have to either be due to a mutation or else the combination of one blue gene, one buff gene and the dark shade variance gene. This pairing produces Royal purples on too regular a basis for it to be due to a color mutation in my opinion.

Depending on what hidden recessive color and dotting genes your other guineas have it you might get mostly Pearl Gray keets and Royal Purple keets but it is not impossible to get colors that you are not expecting.

Good luck.

 

[Victoria-nola]

fox got a guinea on the nest, now down to seven in my flock.

I'm sorry. Yes, the guineas are so vulnerable on their nests. We started with 25 the first time I bought eggs and incubated them. That group dwindled down to 9 individuals, then to 7, between deaths on the road and deaths by predators with them trying to set nests.

If yours coop up, you can keep them in the coop during the mornings and collect their eggs, then incubate them. We incubated the last nest that we had found, after the setters were killed by predators. The eggs had chilled down all day before I realized what happened and got them in the incubator, and almost every one of them continued to develop and hatched out-- we added 25 more to our group last summer. They have seemed to finally learn about the road, as we have only lost 1 this year so far, a strong improvement. And, they are nesting inside the curtilage fence that is around the house and barn, where they are protected somewhat from predators. So our experience is that they can learn and change their strategies, if allowed to retain their integrity as a flock.

I don't know what your circumstances are as I have not been participating in BYC in the last 18 months or so. So, please pardon if you already know all this. I'm new to guineas and learning.