Uh oh... found an egg today! ... - A journal of sorts, from finding eggs to hatching them... Update

[PeepsCA]

I always wash/soak my sponges with pretty strong bleach water after each hatch, along with the bators/hatchers/turners etc... but the sponges get tossed and replaced every 6 hatches, or less if they get pooped on and stained. I'm an OCD germophobe (but I don't wash my eggs, so how's that work out? lol).

My hatch % rate, of viable eggs is usually pretty good... especially mid Spring/early Summer. Not so great at the beginning or end of the hatching season tho due to the bad weather, wind, rain and cold night time temps early Spring and then the excruciatingly hot temps late Summer early Fall. 1st hatch this year I only had 18 viable eggs (collected in freezing temps) but only hatched 13 keets, one keet was a runt and expired day 3 or 4. (Last yr's 1st hatch was only 3 keets put of 18 eggs!). 2nd hatch for this yr was better, but still not that great. 3rd hatch looks like it'll be about the same as batch # 2. Batches #4, #5 and #6 all have more viable eggs to work with, (so viablility % is improving with each batch),and we'll see how well they do. I do like the smaller hatches tho, much easier/cleaner to deal with, lol. Last season I had double stuffed incubators with staggered hatches and sometimes I had 50+ eggs in the hatcher at once, ugh so messy!

And yah, this site rocks! I've learned SO MUCH here, always something new every day... maybe not always pertaining to Guineas per say, but always adaptable to my flocks (Peas and Turkey too) or hatching, in one way or another.


As far as the pest control/patrol bennies go... I have a full time free range flock of Pearl Greys, Royal Purples and a Buff Dundotte... this is the flock I collect eggs from for consumption... they eat nothing but some sweet feed twice a day for a quick roll call, then they are back out free ranging for the rest of their diet. Nothin' like those yummie, rich dark yellow/orange yolk free range eggs

This flock also does the majority of my the tick/snake/spider patrol/control, (as well as horse manure scattering and fly control!) and they absolutely rule the roost here, every single inch of my 10 acres, and they know it (they give the other flocks heck, bigtime) lol. I've always had a full time free range flock, but their numbers dwindle and have to be replenished every couple yrs or so, as the owls tend to pick them off because this flock insists on sleeping in the trees and braving the elements and predators rather than safely roosting in one of the many open air sheds (with roosts) on the acreage

. They are currently down to only 12, and I'm working on merging a flock of 16 Pieds in with them, (28 has always been the magic number here), but the free range Gangstas are having none of that. They will all range together with not too much squabbling, but forget the roosting tree! So the Pieds get put away every night in a coop protected by my stinky billy goat, "Smellvis" (Elvis).

Anyway... yah, the pest patrol/control issue is why I originally got Guineas, and they have earned and do earn their keep in that area. Making money off the other flocks to pay for feed and building materials for more coops/runs (lol) is a by-product of my Guinea addiction (and the cause of my insanity!)

I have my fingers crossed for your Guinea eggs, we need some more keet pics on here!!!!!!!!!!!! (Don't show me any Silkies tho, cuz I'll have to have some, lol!)

 

[mr bellmere]

Here's a pic showing the keet I call Cinnamon (he's Pied tho) in my first 2012 hatch. Not the best pic, the color is a little light on him, cuz I used the flash and it looks like it really lit him up good lol, but if you can tell... there's an ashy, almost greyish tint to the center stripe of his head, and also his body feathers growing in have an ashy tint to them too compared to the Browns' feathers. Hope that helps.



And here's the first keet from Hatch #3, early, on day 24... found his egg pipped last night when I was candling as I was moving Batch # 3 to the hatcher. (Really crappy pic, sorry, the camera lens kept foggin' up so I backed way up and zoomed in... bad idea, lol). He looks a little ashy colored... so this one might be a Cinnamon too (not Pied). Might be a Brown male tho. We'll see.

The first piccy (the middle one) looks to be the closest in colour to our cins, ya just need the red eye Tell ya what, swap you white guineas for some cinnamons????

 

[PeepsCA]

LOL I'd love to swap keets with ya mr bellmere! (ahhh, if only it were that easy!)

I named my first white keet of 2012 after you (but I took off the mr part til I know what sex it is, lol)

Thanks for the color reference as to how your Cinnamon keets look compared to my keets... but that keet in the middle will feather out as a Brown (IMO much darker compared to what your Cinnamons look like as adults).
That keet will probably look just like this young 4-5 month old Hen (I know she looks similar to a normal Pearl Grey, but she's a dark brown based bird, like dark roasted coffee):

Or this older Brown Hen. (She's a little lighter, but all my Browns are a lot darker than what others breed... just like my Chocolates).



Cinnamon really isn't an "official" color over here in the US, but a few breeders have definitely been trying to breed something similar in color to the Oz Cinnamons, and it is now finally a color listed on a couple US color charts (lacking the red eyes of course). Most of the Guineas that I have seen labeled as Cinnamons here (just mature birds, I have yet to see any Cinnamon keet pics other than my own... which are all Pied) are a light, soft Brown color, but darker than our Buff Dundottes. with a slight dusty almost ashy/grey tint to the color as well. And even as keets they have the ashy/grey tint too... at least in my flocks they do (if that makes any sense... I'm even confusing myself at this point, lol).

 

[Country Chickens]

Both silkie hatches successfully completed, the second with all four eggs hatching sturdy chicks! Yay! I'll honor your request and not post pics, but I'm using a great deal of self control! haha Just finished disinfecting the hovabator so the guinea eggs can move over tomorrow night. Question for you--what humidity level do you incubate your guinea eggs at? I've heard everything from 65% to over 80, and never felt like there was one answer I was sure of. Truth is, I'm wishing I could hatch the next silkie batch along with the guineas (they're both small batches) but would prefer silkies humidity stay down closer to 65-70 and not sure that's high enough for guineas.

I found your last post about your free range flock interesting. Right now we haven't got anywhere near enough birds, and with only five acres I don't know that it would ever be sensible, but it sounds fun. Something to do with the extra pearls, possibly.

How are your latest hatches coming? I'm just assuming there are hatches going on?

 

[PeepsCA]

LOL, go ahead and post the Silkie chick pics, I'll suffer thru them, lol. Congrats on a successful hatch

I've wanted some cute little Silkies for so long (cuz they are just so dang cute and cuz they are good lil broodies), it's just a little too rugged out here on my 10 acres for them with all my 100+ Guineas on the prowl for something to beat up/pick on, lol, so I need the right setup for them (their own coop with a nice safe large run where Guineas can't bully them etc). Another problem with building coops and runs out here is that my horses, donkey and goats pretty much have access to everywhere but the driveway area, and the front and back yards, so whatever I build has to be goat, horse and donkey proof... can't be anything they can chew on, climb on, rub on or push over, lol, which adds substantially to the material costs. I'll figure somethin' out eventually... I don't by any means need Silkies, I just want them, lol.

The suggested Humidity for lockdown on Guinea eggs is 65%, but IMO, Guinea eggs really do need higher humidity, like around 75%-80% works best for me, but if you can hold it at a steady 70%, they may do fine in with the Silkie eggs.

My 3rd hatch is pretty much finally over... 24 keets out of 26 eggs, and it's a more of a Blue/Lite Lavender hatch this time than Brown like the last 2 have been... there are lots of Pied Lite Lavenders, several regular (I think) and Pied Lavenders, 3 or 4 Coral Blues, some Pied Browns, a Pied Buff Dundotte and a pure White, and I think 1 Royal Purple.Some of them are fluffed and dried, (and complaining) already, but there's quite a few that aren't dry yet so it's hard to tell exactly what's there so far. Most of the hatch finished during the night/early morning, and the last 4 hatched around noon or so while I was outside, so everybody is still pretty soggy. I took all the sponges out and opened the vents... now I'm trying to get ambitious enough to get another brooder set up for them all (I've been out brushin' horses and checkin' my Momma Goats out in some wind gusts today so I feel thrashed, and drained, lol... whine whine whine). I might just take just the rambunctious keets out and leave the rest to bulldoze for a while til they've all got those feet and legs working good. I haven't taken any pics.. but I will.

Anyway, good luck wth your Guinea hatch!

 

[PeepsCA]

Here's the majority of Hatch #3... the rest are in the hatcher drying still.

 

[Country Chickens]

Okay, just one pic then!

This was the first batch, which were actually hatched at 65-75 humidity because I didn't want to mess with the humidity when the LG's temp was swinging around the way it was. Have I mentioned how much I hate my LG? Got another hovabotor coming (and you've got me looking at a Dickey's instead of the Sportsman, thanks for that!) so I'll just use the LG as a temp brooder. Anyway, given that these guys hatched fine at humidity that high, I think I'll aim for 75 for this guinea/silkie batch and hope everyone is happy. Worth a try, right?

I know what you mean about wanting silkies, but not NEEDing them. I really WANT peafowl, but haven't yet figured out where--exactly--we'd put them and how they'd fit into the scheme. Plus, I only know what I've read about them and vaguely remember from when I was a kid and my Grandpa had them, so I wonder if they'd be too hard to take care of as chicks and if they'd fly off. They'll stay on the list, but it might be awhile til they get to come home to the backyard.

Congrats on those fantastic colored keets in this last batch! Are they really light grey ones the coral blue? Can't remember what those are supposed to look like without checking my charts. This batch is fun how they seem at first glance to be all just two colors--like you had several dozen sets of salt and pepper twins!

 

[PeepsCA]

Oh man... cuteness to the 10th power! I want some Silkies even worse now, lol

They are just wayyyy too cute!!!

75% humidity should be fine for the keets, hope it does OK for the Silkies, (I've never hatched any type of chicks before, just keets and turkey poults, with high RH). Let me know how it goes!

The Coral Blue keets have blue/grey and tan squiggly/broken stripes on their heads, white wings all the way to the shoulders. Tho now that the few in this last batch are dry... I'm 2nd guessing that they might be Lite Blues instead. There's only one fairly obvious one in the pic up there, and his head is down so you can't see his head stripes... you can just see his back/butt and white wings, upper right by the mirror under the 2 Pied Lavenders (darker grey keets). His body color looks a shade lighter than theirs. I'll get better pics of them all once everybody's dried and fluffed and all in the brooder together.

Peafowl are way cool... very elegant, serene birds, and comical at the same time with their weird/odd honks and calls (they really freak my goats out bad, lololol). I raised 2 of my youngest Hens from chicks, but they don't like to be handled or petted, and will only take chunks of boiled egg yolk from my hand, nothing else), the other 2 I got already mature/grown so they are even less thrilled about being touched and won't eat from my hand. I hope to get their new pen done soon so I can get them away from the skitzo Guineas they're currently penned with, then spend some quality quiet time with the Peas and hopefully gain more of their trust. I have not had the oldest 2 long enough to let them free range and be confident they won't all 4 take off together, so for now they are all still penned. Not gonna risk it, yet

 

[perchie.girl]

Wow I just read your signature.... if you do a hatch a week thats what 25-30 thats 900-1080 in nine months...

deb

 

[PeepsCA]

No way, lol 782 keets beat me hard enough last yr. I'm only hatching til I know my fertility rates are good, then I'm selling and auctioning hatching eggs, lol