Guinea talk.

[GlennLee]

If my guineas are laying their eggs randomly will they still sit on them. I find them scattered in the coop

Mine are scattered on occasion as well. My males are also VERY interested in the eggs and will sit on them from time to time. You never know what you will find, right?

 

[GuineaHale]

Should I separate the males and females once they start going broody or should they be ok?

 

[R2elk]

Should I separate the males and females once they start going broody or should they be ok?

Guinea males are often part of the broody process as the devoted males will stand guard near the nest. Guinea males should not be separated from their mates.

 

[MartinsPoultry]

We almost lost our clutch of Muscovy eggs due to the incubator I had them in went haywire. I honestly hope I didn't loose them. I now have them in the same incubator with the guinea eggs. Fingers crossed life shows on Sunday, if not is starting from the ground up.

 

[alexa32]

My Guinea has laid six eggs but I'm not sure if mate with my neighbor's male guinea or my roosters are mating with her in either case how long with it take for them to hatch if she lays on them?

 

[MartinsPoultry]

My Guinea has laid six eggs but I'm not sure if mate with my neighbor's male guinea or my roosters are mating with her in either case how long with it take for them to hatch if she lays on them?

its anywhere from 28-32 days of incubation for guinea eggs. I have almost a dozen in the incubator right now.

 

[R2elk]

its anywhere from 28-32 days of incubation for guinea eggs. I have almost a dozen in the incubator right now.

Guinea eggs take from 26 to 28 days to hatch. I have even had a few hatch at 25 days. Under my broody chicken hens they either hatch at 26 days or 28 days. The hen that takes 28 days to hatch them spends more time off of the nest than the other hens do.

If you have guinea eggs that take 32 days to hatch, they are being incubated at too low a temperature. If you are using a still air incubator, it is common to have hot and cold spots in the incubator. A forced air incubator does better but even they can have temperature variations throughout the incubator.

 

[MartinsPoultry]

Must have gotten the numbers wrong.

 

[GlennLee]

Should I separate the males and females once they start going broody or should they be ok?

I just wanted to share some of my experiences here since they are timely. The quick answer would be no, don't separate the males and females, BUT be ready for possible aggression depending on the circumstances of your flock. I have been trying to keep a flock of 12+ birds for a year now to free range for ticks / insect control. They move together as one unit and are very content in their work and play. At least they had been up until a few weeks ago. I also saw some of this behavior in the fall when the females were laying and one went broody.

First of all, a few things happened here to change the flock dynamic. Through the winter and early spring, I had extra females and a friend of mine didn't have enough females to keep things going with her flock, so I gifted her two regular domestics. It made sense at the time. I try to keep mostly French Jumbos and I had enough French Jumbo females without the two for breeding purposes.

So with the two females gone, I had equal distribution of males and females. Should be good to go right? NOPE... that all changed in a heartbeat. I lost 3 of them to a predator - one male and two females, so now I'm male heavy with breeding season coming up and they were so out of sorts now from losing 5 members, they fell apart as a flock and started breaking out into singletons, couplets or trios.

Two days ago another male came up MIA. My ratio now is 3 males, 3 females. So one would think - oh good, balance in the flock again. NO... not at all. I have one male who wants a harem of three females and he fights off the other two CONSTANTLY and aggressively. Then the two outliers fight between themselves. I don't just mean chasing, but pulling feathers, body slamming, pecking - like they want to and would kill each other. It's not bad when everyone is outside and has room to get away, but it is a problem when I put them all together in the coop.

Thankfully, we never took down our old coop (utility shed) with two runs attached. I now separate the males into the three areas at night. The females are usually with the one male, but sometimes, one will hang with another male and I just leave the females in with whatever male they are with. I'm going to have to change things up again when they go broody. I have one community nest going in the barn coop and one going in the utility shed coop.

Really, its a bit like Peyton Place - I never know who will be sleeping with whom at the end of the day! So, you may have to be prepared to keep some of the males away from one another and a broody hen with a protective cock overseeing the nest. Just something to be aware of. Not everyone has this issue, but it's something to be aware of.

As an aside, I have 20 Jumbo lavender keets arriving a little after the 4th of July and hope to be hatching some here as well. Photo op for sure! Going forward, I'm going to try to keep the flock at least 2/3 female to 1/3 male and monitor how that impacts their aggression.

Good luck with everything. It's an exciting time of year with breeding, brooding and hatching! And, thanks for posting the question. That's the way we all learn from each other.

 

[GlennLee]

We almost lost our clutch of Muscovy eggs due to the incubator I had them in went haywire. I honestly hope I didn't loose them. I now have them in the same incubator with the guinea eggs. Fingers crossed life shows on Sunday, if not is starting from the ground up.

I hope you didn't lose them either... that's frustrating when the incubator malfunctions. I'm playing with mine here and will try to hatch some depending on the numbers in the nests. So far I have 5 in one community nest in the utility shed coop and 15 in the other community nest in the straw bale caves in the barn coop. It would be great if I could keep my hands off this process as much as possible, but you never know. Have a great day! The sunrise is beautiful here this morning, but it's deceiving - rain and SNOW showers are in the forecast for today!