I found the nest...now what?

[CDennis]

I have known for several weeks that my guinea hens were laying someplace else, today I located the nest in my pasture filled w/ eggs and a momma guinea. I am pretty sure she has not been sitting regularly because I have two sets of guinea fowl and I see both of them out almost daily, but it has been warm lately over 80 so maybe the eggs are still cooking. She has been sitting for awhile because the eggs are not all fitting under her from what I could see, I didn't get too close I can only imagine that would end poorly for me. I have read lots of posts that guinea fowl do not make good parents in our environment in Africa they may have been great! I do not have an incubator so I guess my options are limited. I can see if any hatch and let her try to raise them or I can steal them from her (hopefully w/ out loosing a limb) and put them under a heat lamp. I guess the third option is to find someone with an incubator. Any ideas?

 

[robin416]

If you can do something to make her secure from things like coons the best option is to just leave her there. If not then you might have to take the nest from her to protect her.

If she does hatch the keets then herd her and the keets to the coop and lock them down. Depending on how far away the nest is this could take a very long time so be ready for it. Be patient, babies will struggle in any tall vegetation and will get tired. Sometimes mom will stop to let them rest.

If your temps are hovering in the 90's there is no need for her to remain on the nest during the day. Any cooler than that she may not be setting but was laying another egg when you found her.

 

[damselfish]

Couple of things:

The heat lamp thing would be a long, difficult run because of the need for humidity control, etc.

If she has so many eggs that she's not covering them all, steal some & mark the rest while she's out getting food and water. Otherwise, you'll likely get a poor hatch (we recently had 4 out of almost 40 because we let her alone with all she had). Once they're marked, you can also steal any new ones that are laid...or if you don't get that done, at least you'll know which ones are probably never going to hatch.

We put up a makeshift fence around ours, literally driving in T-posts a few feet from her while she sat there the first night. She didn't move. Then we attached welded wire around it. Even at that, I think we got lucky. Something determined would easily have gotten in.

If you can, take the eggs you pull and get someone to incubate them. The odds of your girl making it are low, and you'll want replacements. Example: We started in 08 with 7 females and 9 males. I now have 1 original female, 5 original males and 1 female from a hatch where the mom was smart enough to set her eggs in the chicken coop. Plus 4 keets from our very lucky outdoor hatch this year. 5 of the other females were lost while setting outdoors, plus one to a daytime predator.

Good luck! That turned out to be more than a "couple" of things, didn't it?