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

[PeepsCA]

I've read on another forum that if you cage your Pied Hen in a wire cage for a few days that will supposedly break her broodiness... has to be a wire floor, no bedding or roosts tho. It's something about the cold wire floor that resets their brain to snap out of broodiness, then she should start laying again soon after.

I hatched another of those reddish Chocolate keets in this last hatch (so that makes 3 so far this season), plus 4 or 5 more Royal Purples that I'll have to look at their colors really closely as they get a little older to make sure they aren't going to turn out to be the "other" color of Chocolates, and I also hatched 2 more Buffs in this last hatch (probably a Hen and a male). Nothing else extra special, just more of the usual same colors/Pieds. I think there's 21 keets total. I'll try to get pics today.

I've been selling lots of keets this past week and a half, (whew!). I have a sale for 20 of my oldest keets that are out in my outdoor brooder scheduled for tomorrow, and I think I'll be selling 12 of the 2-3 wk olds pretty soon as well. Which just leaves me with just the 3 batches of the youngest, well 2 1/2 batches actually, I sold 13 of the youngest batch of 32 over the weekend. Just when I was getting overwhelmed and burning out, there's light at the end of the tunnel! Now, if I could just STOP KEEPING 2-5 KEETS PER HATCH FOR MYSELF, lol.

I'm down to just 2 incubators running since I moved batch #8 to the hatcher earlier this week, but I think I'll fire the 3rd one back up again. It's not the best incubator, but I usually start eggs in it, then rotate them to one of the 1588s when I move a batch to the hatcher. I've collected another 4 dozen eggs for the fridge and already have 2+ dozen stored for the incubator, so within a couple days I'll probably be setting another batch. The flock my Turkey is in with (the Hens are 6 Browns, 3 Chocolates, 1 Royal Purple and the males are 1 Brown, 1 Buff and 1 Coral Blue) has bumped up their laying to 7-8 eggs a day the past couple days, (and MsTurkey Girl laid another for me too), plus I'm getting 3-4 eggs a day from my uphill light colored Pied breeding flock now too (last yr's main breeding flock). Except I've let them out too early a couple days in a row so now I need to go hunt the uphill pasture for a few missing eggs. Today they aren't getting out at all, I want to see exactly how many Hens are laying. I've also found a couple random eggs from my free rangers but for the life of me I cannot find a nest, and I am sick of walking this 10 acres looking for them, lol. I know they are laying somewhere tho (those will going the fridge when I find them, unless they've gone broody on them). I may have to walk the property with my nosy Rott, he finds everything.

Anyway, I'll try to get some pics of hatch #8 taken and posted later today...

 

[Country Chickens]

I don't think she's properly broody cause she's still giving us the occassional egg and in the morning (before the others have layed) she's not on the nest. Today it was her and our white hen on it in the afternoon, though they did let us distract them long enough to steal the eggs. Then they were back on it splitting up one late layed egg and three golfballs between them til I went and got them off at 10:00pm tonight. Silly things. They will generally come home okay once I make them, but they stayed out there through the rain and got soaked. Guess that kept the egg dry, though. Tomorrow I am going to keep them all in to see if that breaks this cycle. If it doesn't, I'll try the cage. Thanks for the tip!

Sounds like you are selling well and hatching lots of beauties. You are going to have so many chocolates you don't know what to do with them all! lol Wish our dog would help us find the nests. We just use binoculars and hope we'll get lucky...have a feeling that's not going to work forever. :/ hehe

 

[PeepsCA]

Finally took some pics of Batch #8, I've been slackin'!
Not the greatest pics, but you still get the cuteness factor.


The partially pearled keets are so cute, no matter which color (my favs from this hatch). The 2 Buffs are really different from each other.


And the 2 (reddish) Chocolates in this batch are a little different color from each other too, maybe I finally hatched a male. Or maybe that's a Blonde Hen. It'll be interesting to see how all these mystery colored/new to me keets feather out... I am keepin' 'em all just so I know how they all turn out.

 

[daylily]

Your keets are adorable!!!!!!!

I was wondering why my hens were no longer laying eggs this week, Well I found out that they have been and where! Sneaky Pete's. Our white guinea, Pavi, was calling around the house for days now but no Eggs, I had found one down the driveway two days ago near the woods but couldn't find any others. Today while raking the flower beds, I hear Pavi and her egg song, hummmmm, sounds like it's coming from the woods! Yup I see her, She ran back and laid on her nest hoping I wouldn't see her! About 20 ft into the woods and right under a small Hemlock tree was Pavi sitting on a nest. She was so quite but she finally moved off and imagine my surprise to find 8 good sized guinea eggs in the sweetest nest! I removed the eggs and left 4 in the nesting box in their coop. She has run between the two nests all day! Lol!

Do you think she and her friend Etta will continue to lay there or move back to the coop to lay? If she is going to go broody, I want her in the coop, not the woods! Also the temps at night tend to be below freezing, can the eggs still hatch if she doesn't lay on them at night? I'm surprised the predators didn't find her or the eggs yet! I candled a few eggs and found a large dark spot on the bottom of the round end, does that mean they are fertile? I do not have an incubator nor care to really have one yet, so do you think they might be frozen? I'm so new to this, my experience has been with chickens, and we only wanted them to lay so we never let them keep eggs. Plus they did not free range.

 

[PeepsCA]

Thanks, I'm thoroughly enjoying this hatching season, so much cuteness every week

Since you took all your Hens' eggs from the outdoor nest, they will probably look for a new spot somewhere else outside now, because they think a predator took them and that spot is no longer safe. The chances of them using the new spot in the coop that you picked for them are slim... they aren't like chickens, they do not like their eggs/messed messed with at all. They like to lay where they feel they have privacy, or they do not feel it's a safe place to lay or continue laying. Doesn't matter if they are their eggs in the new spot or not, they will abandon usually them if you move them, and go start over somewhere else. They have to be the ones to pick the spot where they will lay... and their instinct/wild nature usually prefers the woods

You'd think after decades and decades of domestication they'd finally get it and just lay in the coop, but noooooo

the above is what is typical of most Guinea Hens' laying behavior, but there's always exceptions to the rules when anything pertains to Guineas... so it's possible that your Hens may be one of the exceptions and lay in the coop for you where the rest of their eggs are. Hope so, best of luck!

 

[daylily]

Yeah, You are right, I just caught them on the other side of the house in a little group talking and sure enough there was a new nest being worked on!

Then when I went to put their feed and water in the coop, low and behold there were two new eggs!

Sooooo......, What does this mean?????
Seems I am in for an Easter surprise tomorrow. Tonight they went to their old baby coop and hopped in and waited for me to pick them up one at a time and put them in the new one! We were doing so good with them hopping up into the new one, almost a month now. Oh well, we all need a little babying from time to time and they were decent and enjoyed it!

Towards the end of last month they didn't want to be held anymore and would fight, scratch, and bite when I would round them up in the old coop ( they've been using the new coop since Oct!) in the garage and then hand carry them to the other. Tonite they just looked at the new coop ramp thought about it and then walked past and hopped into the one in the garage and made cooing sounds as I picked them up and held them. They even walked out of my arms instead of the usual LET ME OUT OF HERE!

I'll enjoy it for what it was a tender moment. I do enjoy holding the girls they can be so sweet, Mary really loves it and will climb in your lap to be held, then you have to walk around and let her look. She's even napped for an hour in my arms!

Charley has to be petted and his neck rubbed before he will eat or he'll turn everything over. Sal, well, Sal is like a mad man! To hold him I have to hold him Backwards with his butt in the air or he will do some serious damage! I've got the scars on my face, arms, hands and legs to prove it! So when he goes in the old coop too I sorta cringe. I have the gloves with gauntlets and a heavy work coat I put on before I'll pick him up. He cannot be trusted! Oh well, 4 out of five ain't bad!

 

[PeepsCA]

LMAO, your Guineas have you well trained, they deserve a treat! Consider yourself lucky, most of us can't even touch our Guineas, lol.

Try moving all the eggs to the coop where you want them to lay... or collect and eat them, and just leave a few in the coop in hopes they continue to lay there, and don't let them build piles anywhere else.

Have fun, you'll be doing this egg thing 'til Fall if the Hens don't all brood a pile together lol

 

[perchie.girl]

Just curious do guineas fall for dummy eggs like porcelain ones?

 

[PeepsCA]

I've never used them, just incubator duds and brown chicken eggs... but I know quite a few that have used ceramic and wooden eggs to salt nests with and they worked great. I think Country Chickens even fooled her Hens with golf balls (and a predator took them all, lol). Bad thing about fake eggs is if you live in an egg snatchin' snake territory they can kill the snakes... plus you are out $$ for the fake eggs.

 

[perchie.girl]

I am thinking golf ball here. Maybe drilling a hole through and zip tieing it to a short leash so it moves around but cant be removed..... Still no eggs here yet. Should be soon because its warming up finally up there. I have a little lean to built in the coop. Hopefully it will be private enough.

I looked up egg eating snakes in Southern California and the only ones I could find in our area are gopher snakes and King snakes, every one else's habitat is more coastal. We have bunches of ravens but they cant get in. But they are smart enough to use a rock to smash em first.

Here is the herp site I looked in. http://www.californiaherps.com/identification/socalherps.html


deb

I've never used them, just incubator duds and brown chicken eggs... but I know quite a few that have used ceramic and wooden eggs to salt nests with and they worked great. I think Country Chickens even fooled her Hens with golf balls (and a predator took them all, lol). Bad thing about fake eggs is if you live in an egg snatchin' snake territory they can kill the snakes... plus you are out $$ for the fake eggs.