My Babies Are Hatching!!!!!!!!!!

[Friendly_Lurker]

Moved the last baby to the brooder. Still holding out hope on the last two eggs. But a 10 out of 12 hatch rate with a 9 out of 12 survival rate is pretty good.

 

[TwoCrows]

View attachment 2055954
Here they are! Out of twelve eggs, ten hatched, nine survived, eight are here because one hatched this morning and is in the incubator.

Congrats on the hatch!

 

[Sapphire Sebright]

Congratulations on your new little chicks!

I had a guinea named Penguin once

You've kept guineas? Do you have any pictures, by chance? I love guineas almost as much as I love chickens -- which is a lot.

 

[Friendly_Lurker]

Congratulations on your new little chicks!


You've kept guineas? Do you have any pictures, by chance? I love guineas almost as much as I love chickens -- which is a lot.

I've found guineas a bit difficult to love, their shriekieness and tendency to bite and lose all their feathers if you catch them doesen't make them great pets. I keep mine for an alarm system, which the dog knows to respond to. Also, they're not very, say, cute once they're grown, are they? but mine are very helpful. though they're all girls but they won't lay.

 

[Sapphire Sebright]

Are you sure that they aren't laying? Maybe they aren't, if there aren't any males, but guinea fowl are notoriously well-known for being excellent nest-hiders and setters. I, myself, have had (just in the first year of laying!) a nest that was so far into a brushpile that I had to lay on my side and reach way in all the way up to my shoulder (with my hair getting all full of pine needles and twigs), and another nest that was surrounded by pricker bushes. And then the hen would open her beak and raise her wings at me, and bite me if I reached for her! Sheesh....
So, anyway, check all over the place, especially in the most inconvenient spots, and put on plenty of bug spray to keep the ticks off -- you may find yourself laying on the ground to check for or reach into a nest.
They do look a little odd, I agree -- one of my hens, Articuno, always makes me think of a bony-faced woman who's gone a little heavy on the mascara and eyeshadow.

 

[drumstick diva]

Now I'm curious to see a photo of Articuno

 

[Friendly_Lurker]

Are you sure that they aren't laying? Maybe they aren't, if there aren't any males, but guinea fowl are notoriously well-known for being excellent nest-hiders and setters. I, myself, have had (just in the first year of laying!) a nest that was so far into a brushpile that I had to lay on my side and reach way in all the way up to my shoulder (with my hair getting all full of pine needles and twigs), and another nest that was surrounded by pricker bushes. And then the hen would open her beak and raise her wings at me, and bite me if I reached for her! Sheesh....
So, anyway, check all over the place, especially in the most inconvenient spots, and put on plenty of bug spray to keep the ticks off -- you may find yourself laying on the ground to check for or reach into a nest.
They do look a little odd, I agree -- one of my hens, Articuno, always makes me think of a bony-faced woman who's gone a little heavy on the mascara and eyeshadow.

Oh, I know my guinea eggs. They’re more pointed and very very hard.

 

[Friendly_Lurker]

Also, from reading your posts, Sapphire Sebright, you seem to have very weird names for your birds. Where do you get your ideas?

 

[Friendly_Lurker]

Here’s my guineas. I like the one I’ve got that looks like a penguin with a purple gray back and a white stomach.

 

[Sapphire Sebright]

Also, from reading your posts, Sapphire Sebright, you seem to have very weird names for your birds. Where do you get your ideas?

My first batch of chickens all had names from anime and manga characters.
The first three guineas are named after Pokemon. Spook was called that because guineas are so skittish -- though he isn't really skittish at all due to imprinting on me. Spook is also the name of a character in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy.
My second batch of chickens, from last year, mostly have food names -- Poppy after poppyseeds; Marshmallow after, well, marshmallows, because she was so darned fluffy and soft as a chick; Kahlua was after the coffee liqueur; Zapraska is after the Slovak word for "roux"; Cinnamon's name was self-explanatory; Lefty is so named because it looked like his left leg was fluffier than his right when he was a chick; Pin was called that because he was so tiny. Lavender was another Sapphire Gem chick -- Poppy's flock sister -- but she died after a week or two, for some reason that I do not know.
So, there are the names. I don't know what theme my next batch will be named for, but I'm thinking medical stuff -- Asphyxia and Hypoxia would be lovely names for a couple of blue-gray chicks, don't you think? Okay, that was dark, sorry.