Sun, Are all your light colored guineas lavenders and buff dundottes or others colors as well? I have both of those colors (plus a pied and a few pearl gray) and really like them, but would love to have some purples or other darker colors as well. Also, I'm happy to hear your little keet is doing well. I hope you continue to be predator free. The corn and soybeans are finally getting harvested where I live so there is no cover for fox and coyote to hide. Although I am seeing less of those, I am seeing more hawks and eagles flying over the fields looking for prey. They seem to be occasionally eyeing the keets but so far I have not lost any to them. I hope everyone continues to be predator free as well!Hi, everyone! Once again, I have been reading along but haven't had a chance to get on the computer to reply. I always have so much to say in response to your posts and its tedious to type anything lengthy from the phone. We just had a few weeks of bad weather. Lots of rain and the property is full of cold wet ponds. Lots of leaves fell from the winds we just had and I'm happy about that. I'm hoping to sweep them all up with the lawn tractor later today and get them in the coops and run to start composting. I had a really bad mite infestation that I had to take care of last week and the worst thing about it is that it sets back my deep litter when I have to put fresh bedding and insecticides in the coop. I thought I was going to have to put something topical on them so I bought Eprinex but so far everything looks good. I had a coupon for it, though, so I'm going to hang on to it until I worm them in January or February. I hadn't heard of Eprinex before, so I want to thank GlennLee for that information. Pattyhen, I love hearing the stories of Spiderman and Mary Jane! They really make me laugh. It looks like Dmontgomery has brought a few more clowns to the forum as well. One of my 8-week-old keets finally started perquacking today. Up until now a few were doing some baby two syllable sounds, so between that and one of my cockerels I knew who was female. He has been biting and mounting the female babies for the past couple of weeks now, which makes me so mad. They scream and struggle and he keeps trying to do his thing. He doesn't even try to mount any of the young chicken females, just the guineas. His dad is the head rooster and has claim on all the sexually mature chicken hens. The cockerel makes me really mad when he does that, though, but his saving grace is that he is my only other male mature enough to act like a flock guardian at this point. He is half Japanese and half Sebright bantam so he's not very large. In fact, I have a few large breed cockerels that are much larger than him, but they are sissies and don't seem interested in "roostering" very much. They started crowing a bit in the morning a while back but no longer even try it. Right now I have seventeen male chickens plus some chicks that are a few weeks old that I already suspect are male. I am trying to work up the nerve to dispatch a few of them today. Its putting a lot of tension in the flock not to mention increasing the food bill. Its hard to take that first step, though. Back to the guineas, though, I haven't lost any of my young ones since poor Polly. They have switched from hanging out with the chickens to hanging out with my two oldest keets, the pearl pieds that are the offspring of Purple (whom I still miss!) and the white hen. They are trouble! They have been leading them around all over the place, into the soybeans, up into trees, into the road...The other day I had chickens, turkeys, and guineas all in the road right in front of the house and I had to go out there and yell at them. Once again, I am reminded of how I need to not get too attached, because sometimes these birds seem adamant about trying to get themselves killed. The baby is doing well so far. She has been free ranging with her parents every day and I had quite a scare one day last week. I was upstairs putting clothes away and suddenly I heard the alarm call. I ran downstairs in a panic, grabbing a rifle on my way out the door. I paused on the deck to try to figure out what direction it was coming from, and it was the patch of woods closest to the house, separated from us by soybeans. I was sure it was a fox! I ran through the soybeans (no easy task as they are all tangled together) and got to the woods and saw Mama and Dad screaming into a patchy bush. I didn't see anything right away and I was afraid it was the baby in there but after a closer look it was a big rat snake. Phew! I was so relieved! I didn't see the baby anywhere, though, and I was worried. Once I arrived on scene, they calmed down though and seemed to figure I'd take over dealing with the threat. They wandered back into the soybeans and I watched the snake slither away. It may or may not have been the same one I had thrown into the soybeans after I found my cat playing with it at dusk a couple of weeks before. I followed them into the soybeans for a bit until I finally caught a glimpse of the baby back in their possession. Still breathing heavy from the adrenaline, I made my way back to the house, very grateful it wasn't a fox or hawk and everyone was okay. The only other drama started when Mama decided she was tired of sleeping on the ground with the baby and it was time to teach her to roost. This was a little over a week ago. The first night, she and Dad tried to convince baby to fly up into a tree. I wasn't going to allow that, and luckily baby wasn't too keen on the idea, anyway. That night I put her back in her pen and they slept on the ground again. The following night, Mama decided to go into the coop and roost there, which involved biting and running all of the chickens out. After an hour of that she gave up and went outside to the turkey roost that is in the run, which meant running the turkeys off. The turkeys were aggravated but gave in. One ended up sleeping in the coop, and the other waited until it was dark and made her way back to the roost. At that point Mama couldn't see well enough to run her off again. They took over the turkey roost again the following night, but it was starting to get pretty cold at night so after that she decided to go back into the coop at night. All the fighting was really stressing me out (it was the same way at feed time) but she finally started to figure out no one is trying to assault her baby. She still chases some of the other birds a bit, but she is getting better about it. I found one of my young chickens pecked to death not long ago and I'm pretty sure it was her that did it. All in all, the experience has gone a bit like I expected, with her creating discourse and tension in the flock for a while. I am glad it is working itself out and now she is even letting baby just be one of the guinea flock though she does still mother her.
Looking at my flock, I wish I had some purples in there to offset all the light colors. Hopefully I will get some in the spring.
Although I am tempted to tell you not to buy the incubator that I have, I am hesitant to do this because I'm not completely sure it was the incubator's fault in my situation. Because of this, I will let others comment on this since I'm not very knowledgable in this area. As I said above, my guinea hens are pretty successful in hatching their own, so if I can be of any help in that area, please let me know. I'm certainly no expert and can't really take the credit since the guineas do all the work, but I'm happy to share any info I have or lessons learned!
