Moving setting Guinea

[Kajunbanty]

I have a Guinea sitting on a nest full of eggs down by my pond in some brush. I am concern that a coon, fox ect. will get her and would like to move her up to the barn. Has anyone ever moved a Guinea after she started setting?? If it will cause her to leave her eggs I would rather just let her be and hope for the best. Since we got our Blue Heeler dog we have not seen anything of the fox we had problems with. Please let me know what you think about moving her or leaving her.

 

[racuda]

The best option would be to put the eggs under a chicken if you have one sitting. The Guinea hen will almost surely abandon the nest if you move it. If you leave her, there is a high probability that the keets won't survive. Mine didn't.

 

[MuranoFarms]

I would give the eggs to a broody hen or put a heavy duty cage around the guinea and nest. If you opt for the cage idea, you'll have to make sure you feed her daily. If she's broody and you take the eggs....make sure you coop her up for a few days if you have other guinea hens laying. She might steal their nests and start setting there! lol (mine did!)

 

[cackler]

I had 2 1- year old females whose life conquest was to have families. They seemed to take turns setting on eggs. One would set until the coons would get the eggs and then by then the other one would set - until the coons got the eggs. This has happened all Spring and Summer now. I decided that this was their life's work so why not let them be happy. Well, just a couple of nights ago - something ate one of my females and of course all of her eggs....

I now wish that I would've done SOMEthing. So - my advice is - if you want all of those involved to survive and make it an easy transition - incubate or put the eggs under a broody chicken. Otherwise it seems to me to pretty much be a guarantee that some or maybe all of those involved won't survive. I would guess that out of my 2 females they have had 6 or 7 nests so far and it's a 0% hatch rate and I'm down 1 bird.

 

[robin416]

Train your birds to lay in the coop. For those its not that hard to separate the females from the males before letting them out for the day. Keep the females in until they lay their egg for the day. Do that for several days in a row and they will return to the nest in the coop each time.

For those that have a larger flock, the whole flock will need to be kept up for several days until the girls have laid their egg for the day. This is where a large outside pen comes in handy. It allows them to be outside but under your control.

 

[cackler]

Train your birds to lay in the coop. For those its not that hard to separate the females from the males before letting them out for the day. Keep the females in until they lay their egg for the day. Do that for several days in a row and they will return to the nest in the coop each time.

The nest boxes I have are on the wall. Will the guineas lay on the ground in the coop? It seems that outside they'll prepare a nest and then start laying there. I'm just wondering how it works inside a coop that has nesting boxes.​

 

[robin416]

For the most part I have plywood leaning against a wall with straw in them. I have one that has her nest behind the container that holds their feed. I've never done elevated nest boxes for any my birds, just more building I'd have to do.

 

[Costa Rica Art]

I had one hen setting on 37 eggs when I found her and moved her away from harm. There were 3 other hens laying eggs in her nest. The best thing you can do if you want to hatch the eggs is to put them in a incubator, so many eggs hatching at different times. I had one hen disappear on me, she finally tired to make it to water too late, found her eggs but the were cool so a total loss. At one time there were so many guineas flying around we had every fox and coyote coming around to try and get them but they roosted in the trees. I ended up taking out 13 skunks, at least 6 coons, 4 bobcats and who knows how many fox and coyotes. I had a .22 mag with a laser sight but is just got to be too much to set up every night. I gave up. . . .

 

[mamawolf544]

I never let guineas hatch eggs. In my experience they are horrible mothers. I always look for there nest and incubate the eggs, raise the chicks a couple of months and then I let the guineas have them back.

 

[cackler]

Quote:
That's what I am starting to feel is going to happen to me....I mean, I started with 2 females who had nothing on their minds except to lay eggs and hatch little ones.....Just a constant instinctual event. Finally something got one of the females and now I have one left. I was beginning to feel like I could try to save every egg and incubate every egg but that's just too many guineas to mess with. I have 1 female left (I'm sure she's got about 10 eggs SOMEwhere by now) and 4 males. I like having the female because you can pretty much guarantee that if you get her convinced to go in the coop the males will definitely follow, but I don't like having to worry about "gosh, she's going to set any day now - where is her nest?". It's just a constant issue with them.