Not good mothers

[WmMike]

My chocolate guinea showed back up in the yard on Wed with 15 new babies, on Thursday she had moved them into the chicken yard. We gathered them up and moved them into the hens house because it was going to get colder and rain. Put a fence to enclose them with chick starter and water. Went out of town for Fri and Sat, came home to only 5. She was in with two males and a rooster but they seemed to ignore them. Just wondered what happened?

Mike

 

[sourland]

In my experience guineas have proven to be very poor mothers. They spend most of their time running around and very little brooding the keets. My best luck was raising keets under bantam hens.

 

[RockerHen]

Same thing happened to me one time. My guinea hatched over 20 keets , I went away for the weekend, came back to no keets at all. They don't have much of a protective motherly instinct, i suppose.

 

[PeepsCA]

She may have trampled them, trying to escape her new enclosure, or the males or rooster lost their minds and killed them. The keets didn't possibly get wet and chilled in the waterer, did they? They may have needed a heat lamp too... hard to say what might have happened for sure tho.