Pearl + White = ???

[PeepsCA]

I'm sure you will get a beautiful assorted hatch of colors and pieds, and maybe a few new colors you don't see in your current flock yet (recessive genes carried by the adults)... but with pearl grey being the dominant color and pearling pattern over the rest, I expect you will get a good % of pearl grey keets.

Good luck with your hatch, and YES please post pics of your hatch in a month, I love seeing everyone's new babies! If you'd like my input on colors I'm pretty accurate at ID'ing keets if the pictures are decent quality (and especially if I can see the stripes and colors on their heads). I've hatched hundreds of keets in all colors (check out my BYC page to see some of my hatches) and I'm very familiar with what all of the different colors and stripe patterns mean as far as knowing what color they will be when they mature

I have 3 separate flocks... one of mixed light colors, pieds and a white, one of just pearl greys, royals purples and bronzes and another of lavender, browns, chocolates and royal purples... and now a new flock from this year's hatches of about 50 keets

 

[PrinceSandwich]

Quote:
I'm hatching some keets next week and I will probably need your chick IDing services.
I've got a question for you, on your BYC page it says that you hatched 300 keet last year, how many breeder females did it take to get that many?

 

[PeepsCA]

Last yr I had 15 free range Hens I was hunting eggs from, and most of them got picked off by August. I started off with 28 Hens in January this year, lost one to a predator recently (actually an owl nabbed a buff dundotte out of her roosting tree, spooked the hen, she landed in the back yard and my Rottweiler killed her grrrrrrr), and I sold 3 about a month ago as part of a mini breeding flock, so now I'm down to 24 Hens that are laying regularly... but only about 14-15 are laying fertile eggs. We eat quite a few eggs, but I still set about 50-60 eggs every 4 days (and toss 15-20 or so clears/infertiles)so I'm averaging about 30-40 keets per hatch, every 4 days

(Sorry, I rambled on... yes, I'm nuts lol).

Here's what's goin' on today... lol

And I'll be more than happy to help you ID your babies

 

[jcatblum]

That is a LOT of babies! I am assuming you are using a separate hatcher. I just asked DH to build me a hatcher. I scored a sportsman with egg trays, plexiglas door & the automatic humidity pail. It was a bargain @$225. Would hate to get it all dirty letting eggs hatch in it!!!
Did a quick count of my guineas. Looks like I have 5 pied lavender 4 lavender 3 grey pearl & 2 coral. It is easy to notice from a distance when one of the pearls is paired with someone else since it is a big color difference. But for the others I have to be close up. I am hoping for lots of pretty keets. I sat 27 eggs today. Next month we will see what all we get!!! I personally don't like the pied ones, but they are my daughters favorite. My favorites are the corals. If we get more corals I will keep them all!!!!!!

 

[PeepsCA]

I love Coral Blues too, my fav! I have ONE lone male in my breeding flock, and he is finally producing some CB keets for me, AND I was lucky enough to pair up a couple Chocolate Hens with a Lavender male and they too are producing CBs for me as of jusr recently, and they are from an unrelated bloodline, so I'm up to 17 new CBs now and I'm absolutely ecstatic

Alot of people don't like the Pieds... but I love them, especially the darker colored Guineas, the color contrast is just so flashy (I also love paint horses, so... I like animals that sport natural bling-bling lol.

Yep, I most definitely have a separate hatcher, 2 in fact, and 4 incubators over stuffed non stop now. So yes that is a lot of babies, and I'll have no problem selling every one of them and then have people begging to buy my adults later on this fall! A Sportsman is my next investment... if I decide to do this again on such a large scale... and that's a big IF, lol. I may focus on specific color breedings next year instead of the free for all I have going on this season

 

[PrinceSandwich]

Quote:
So you only got 20 keet per hen?

Thank you! I wil let you know when they hatch. It's really nice to have someone that knows so much about Guineas on the forum!

 

[PeepsCA]

So you only got 20 keet per hen?

20 keets per Hen, last yr? Hmmm, I dunno, I didn't ever total it up per Hen, i just kept a running total of all the keets that hatched. The Hens mostly laid in the same shared nests and predators got to a lot of the eggs before I'd find them, or I would have hatched a lot more. I'm guessing that because my number of Hens gradually decreased over the season I probably got more keets per Hen towards the end of the season to make up the 300 I hatched last yr.

Basically doing the same thing this year as far as keeping a running total of keets hatched... I'm over 400 now as of this last hatch, I'll update my total tomorrow, lol.​