Quick and disturbing update: all six incubator guinea eggs hatched, so I decided that I needed to take a look at the guinea nest. All day I was seeing a new brown splotch in the guinea cam and wondered what it was (see yellow circle) - a feather, perhaps?Heartbreakingly, in person I could see dead keets on a quick perusal. Sadly, I did indeed hear keets chirping last night and guinea hens cooing.I don’t know how they died, but something went very wrong. Smushed or pecked?? Killer bacteria from m all the broken eggs? Not dismembered or bloody, just dead. I chased out all the guineas and locked the door, then started the difficult task of sorting. 6 dead keets, many rotten eggs, most eggs coated in foul smelling yolky glaze, many eggs alive. DD and I packed eggs into cartons and took into house for a better candle. Around 66 eggs went into the incubator, 4 are only at about 2 weeks, the rest internally pipped or almost fully developed. Several are crushed but with moving embryos. The dirtiest went into cartons, the rest the on their sides. 56 dead eggs were buried, plus the six keets. So, there were about 129 eggs in that nest. I’m so sad for the whole situation, the hens are frantic, and I heard a hen cooing to keets last night. I don’t know why they couldn’t make it work... We are hastily constructing a temporary brooder made of four boards and some wire over the top - I’m afraid that the grossness coating these eggs will mean that the keets will be infected with something contagious to other keets, so I don’t want them thrown in with our six healthy keets that we’ve just hatched.
I'm sooo sorry!
I know it's not the happy ending you were hoping for but that's an incredible number of eggs that are still viable! I hope you have many more happy healthy babies hatch! I'm so looking forward to seeing pictures of that many babies!
