We have about 10 guinea fowl. They run free and roost in the trees. We like them because they are good watch birds being the first to alert us at night if something is wrong. However, they roam quite a bit and because of this tend to disappear at a higher rate than our chickens being an easier food for predators since they roost out in the open, getting hit by cars, etc.
It's time to hatch again and new guinea eggs were put in the incubator at the beginning of the week. MrLivingOurWay and the FindingOurWays searched over the month of May to find the guinea nests until they finally found enough eggs in a short enough period of time to justify running the incubator. The incubation period for keets (baby guinea fowl) is slightly longer that of chickens at about 28 days.
We have only had a few hens try to hatch their own in the past and held our breath over the month of incubation. They like to nest fairly out in the open which makes them even more prone to predators while sitting on a nest. Once hatched, they would guide the chicks all over our property and one was almost always left behind. I think the last one had about half of her keets by the time they were ready to be on their own.
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16 hours ago
We just hatched a batch of keets this week! They are so tiny! I'm curious to watch them grow. Our guinea fowl have started roaming now that we let them out of the pen finally. One day they were gone for almost 8 hours before they returned. I was getting a bit worried. Since then they are still roaming, but not as far it seems. Interesting.
ReplyDeleteJenn, ours are all over the place! Unfortunately, our electricity went out while we were incubating and we forgot to look at the temperature so I'm not sure our eggs are going to make it this year :(. He's going to try and let them go.
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