Here are my end of summer updates on my attempts at egg incubation, keet brooding, and Guinea hen brooding. Incubation wise, I had two separate hatches. The first was terrible, continuing my pattern of eggs that failed to pip at lockdown. I had tried a new turner but that didn’t help, so for hatch 2, I incubated at higher humidity (avg 42% before lockdown vs 28% first hatch). That helped a lot, and my latest hatch rate at lockdown was much improved. Only 2/22 eggs failed to pip. However, I still had several eggs that didn’t zip properly and needed assistance. Those keets did well but then I ended up with two more that were shrink wrapped and needed assistance, and more that pipped and then shrink wrapped and were DIS. So, going forward, I think I need to keep working with increasing the humidity. Overall 25% hatch success at low humidity and >80% at higher humidity.
Keet brooding: another issue I’ve had is with more keets dying after hatch than I expected. With hatch 1, I had 3/18 die at about a week old. I was using puppy pads in the brooder and noted some poly threads had been ripped up and likely ingested, so I opened the 3 keets to see if they had blocked. I really didn’t see that they had blocked, though I did find poly threads in the intestines in 2 keets. All three keets though had a large volume of greenish yolk persisting, consistent with omphalitis. For the second brooding, I went old school with large pine flakes covered in paper towels to start in the brooder. Keets seemed to do well in that, but I still had 3/15 keets die at 3 days of age. I suspect heat stress as it was hot outside (100 F) and my kid had left the garage door open so the garage temp sky rocketed for an hour. Those three keets all died within 3 hours of the door opening, bringing garage temp from 85F to 95F. Two heat stroke keets were the shrink wrapped keets that I’d “saved” so apparently they were still affected by the difficult hatch. I was surprised they had heat exhaustion as the heat lamp is only on half the brooder so they should have been able to move away from the heat lamp and 95F shouldn’t have been too hot. Lesson learned though: young keets, especially if they’ve had a difficult hatch, don’t thermoregulate well. I hatched a Slate and light? Coral blue, so I decided I had to save those and add to flock. That means that I would be integrating birds, which I really dislike, so I decided to go for broke and order some fancy colored keets from Guinea Farm too!
Shipped keets: these Guinea Farm shipped keets are only 9 days younger than the keets from my hatch but the size difference is already incredible!!! Keets arrived after 36 hr transport. They looked amazingly good for shipped keets and I was cautiously optimistic that they would do well. After reading so many posts about die offs of shipped keets I was nervous about: heat/cold/shipping stress resulting in pasty butt (enteritis), omphalitis, plus coccidiosis.The shipped keets looked good, but I could immediately see that they didn’t thermoregulate as well as my home hatched keets. They kept piling up on top of each other directly under the heat light, but my thermometer was telling me it was too hot there, like 103F. If I lowered the light to increase the temps, they would stop piling but pant. If I raised the light so brooder temps were more typical (100F at warmest and 90F at cooler edges) they would pile again. Today is day 4 with those shipped keets and I’ve already lost two, both on Day 3 after arrival. This is despite good eating and drinking behavior of most keets, availability of electrolytes/probiotics as well as water, and a nervous, constant adjustment of temperature. Sadly several look rather subdued so I expect to lose more.
Guinea hen coop brooding: a disaster this year! I’m sharing in full disclosure of the difficulties of Guinea hen brooding but I made lots of mistakes. First off, I said before that I’ll never hatch with multiple broodies again but I broke my own rule. I’ve had a bobcat I can’t dissuade, so guineas have been locked up a lot and that made many go broody. Lemon Pie is a 4 yr old hen that’s very dominant and raised keets in the past, so I figured she would keep the other hens in line. Sadly though, 1 week before hatching, I let the guineas out while I supervised. Darn bobcat grabbed Lemon Pie and killed her before I could help. LP’s 4 yr old sister Pearl took over LPs spot on the nest that night. I should have pulled the plug on my plan then but I didn’t. The other two broody hens had successfully hatched or cared for keets in the past so I left them with six 24 day eggs, divided between their three side by side nests. I added 4 more fake eggs/nest so each hen had six eggs to sit on. In the end, I found 3 hatched keets, but 2 were dead. One more egg failed to hatch and I couldn’t find one more egg! As happened in their past, the presence of one keet was not enough to get hens off the nest and feeding the keet. Also, Pearl kept trying to peck the keet while the less dominant hens tried to hide the keet from her. I kicked out Pearl (who was happy to leave) and tried introducing several more just hatched incubator keets, with a wire box around them. This was a plan that @BennieAnTheJets had successfully used previously, so I was hopeful hens would assume these were flock keets and accept them. Nope. Both hens tried to attack the new keets and became very agitated in general. I finally admitted defeat and grabbed the solo surviving hen-hatched keet, with the requisite ripped up arm to show for it. Poor moms were so confused by the whole thing and so upset that their keet was taken. Traumatic for all. Now I’m working on a 6x2 box I’ll add to their coop and house the keets, once more stable, and try integrating the old fashioned “look don’t touch” way. Wish us all luck!
Keet brooding: another issue I’ve had is with more keets dying after hatch than I expected. With hatch 1, I had 3/18 die at about a week old. I was using puppy pads in the brooder and noted some poly threads had been ripped up and likely ingested, so I opened the 3 keets to see if they had blocked. I really didn’t see that they had blocked, though I did find poly threads in the intestines in 2 keets. All three keets though had a large volume of greenish yolk persisting, consistent with omphalitis. For the second brooding, I went old school with large pine flakes covered in paper towels to start in the brooder. Keets seemed to do well in that, but I still had 3/15 keets die at 3 days of age. I suspect heat stress as it was hot outside (100 F) and my kid had left the garage door open so the garage temp sky rocketed for an hour. Those three keets all died within 3 hours of the door opening, bringing garage temp from 85F to 95F. Two heat stroke keets were the shrink wrapped keets that I’d “saved” so apparently they were still affected by the difficult hatch. I was surprised they had heat exhaustion as the heat lamp is only on half the brooder so they should have been able to move away from the heat lamp and 95F shouldn’t have been too hot. Lesson learned though: young keets, especially if they’ve had a difficult hatch, don’t thermoregulate well. I hatched a Slate and light? Coral blue, so I decided I had to save those and add to flock. That means that I would be integrating birds, which I really dislike, so I decided to go for broke and order some fancy colored keets from Guinea Farm too!
Shipped keets: these Guinea Farm shipped keets are only 9 days younger than the keets from my hatch but the size difference is already incredible!!! Keets arrived after 36 hr transport. They looked amazingly good for shipped keets and I was cautiously optimistic that they would do well. After reading so many posts about die offs of shipped keets I was nervous about: heat/cold/shipping stress resulting in pasty butt (enteritis), omphalitis, plus coccidiosis.The shipped keets looked good, but I could immediately see that they didn’t thermoregulate as well as my home hatched keets. They kept piling up on top of each other directly under the heat light, but my thermometer was telling me it was too hot there, like 103F. If I lowered the light to increase the temps, they would stop piling but pant. If I raised the light so brooder temps were more typical (100F at warmest and 90F at cooler edges) they would pile again. Today is day 4 with those shipped keets and I’ve already lost two, both on Day 3 after arrival. This is despite good eating and drinking behavior of most keets, availability of electrolytes/probiotics as well as water, and a nervous, constant adjustment of temperature. Sadly several look rather subdued so I expect to lose more.
Guinea hen coop brooding: a disaster this year! I’m sharing in full disclosure of the difficulties of Guinea hen brooding but I made lots of mistakes. First off, I said before that I’ll never hatch with multiple broodies again but I broke my own rule. I’ve had a bobcat I can’t dissuade, so guineas have been locked up a lot and that made many go broody. Lemon Pie is a 4 yr old hen that’s very dominant and raised keets in the past, so I figured she would keep the other hens in line. Sadly though, 1 week before hatching, I let the guineas out while I supervised. Darn bobcat grabbed Lemon Pie and killed her before I could help. LP’s 4 yr old sister Pearl took over LPs spot on the nest that night. I should have pulled the plug on my plan then but I didn’t. The other two broody hens had successfully hatched or cared for keets in the past so I left them with six 24 day eggs, divided between their three side by side nests. I added 4 more fake eggs/nest so each hen had six eggs to sit on. In the end, I found 3 hatched keets, but 2 were dead. One more egg failed to hatch and I couldn’t find one more egg! As happened in their past, the presence of one keet was not enough to get hens off the nest and feeding the keet. Also, Pearl kept trying to peck the keet while the less dominant hens tried to hide the keet from her. I kicked out Pearl (who was happy to leave) and tried introducing several more just hatched incubator keets, with a wire box around them. This was a plan that @BennieAnTheJets had successfully used previously, so I was hopeful hens would assume these were flock keets and accept them. Nope. Both hens tried to attack the new keets and became very agitated in general. I finally admitted defeat and grabbed the solo surviving hen-hatched keet, with the requisite ripped up arm to show for it. Poor moms were so confused by the whole thing and so upset that their keet was taken. Traumatic for all. Now I’m working on a 6x2 box I’ll add to their coop and house the keets, once more stable, and try integrating the old fashioned “look don’t touch” way. Wish us all luck!
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Back in the70s tomorrow.
Ofcourse yours are still older than she was, she hatched Nov. 3rd. Such a busy year for her and she's not even one yet.
. They were calling to come out awhile ago, but I said no, with a promise to tell them a story when they're older abt hurricanes and killing fields.
