Why are my guinneas building a mote around the water dish?!

[peepsandquacks]

Every night, the guinnea hens dig a mote around the water dish. They go to bed at 7pm and I let them out at 10am, and there is a 3 inch mote all the way around the dish, no matter where I put it. Now this wouldnt be an issue except the dirt here is very thick and sticky, so every morning I have to scrape the dried black dirt off of the waterer.

I have also noticed a hole inside the run where they are digging to china. it is about 6 inches deep and gets deeper every day. I decided to leave it because I am curious if how deep they will make it!

Is digging a normal thing with these birds? or are mine just crazy...(great possibility)

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote:
Could they be digging for worms? They arent known to being big diggers.

 

[peepsandquacks]

hmm, I dont know what they are digging for. But it must be something really cool, because they are still digging! Maybe they will pull up a huge diamond!!

 

[PeepsCA]

Most likely they are dust bathing in the cool damp dirt around the waterer. Mine dig some pretty good holes too sometimes, getting down to the nice cool damp dirt. Try giving them some soft loose dirt in a different area of your pen and raise your waterer up on large bricks or blocks of wood, or even get the hanging type and be sure to have the rim just a little higher than their shoulders to keep it cleaner. Some people build raised platforms with hardware cloth floors to put their waterers on. I have a small elevated pallet in their run with 2 their waterers sitting on it and they stay fairly clean.

Here's some of my dorky birds dust bathing in damp cool dirty shavings on a hot day:

 

[ColbyNTX]

They could be pretending that it is a castle and needs to be protected from the tribe from the east!

 

[PeepsCA]

lol