Monday, May 23, 2011

We have keets!



Our female guinea has been sitting on a nest for about a month now. She has about 10 eggs under her but I haven't gotten a good count because she is scary protective of the nest. She hisses and arches up and pecks if you get near it. This morning I was going down to throw some food at her and saw some broken eggs outside of the nest and then this little guy poked it's head out! She actually managed to hatch some eggs! This is a big deal for a guinea as they are notoriously bad at actually hatching eggs.

We have at least 2 keets that I've seen. And there are still some unhatched eggs under her, so I'm hoping for more. I still haven't gotten a good look at what is in the nest. I guess I'll need to drive her off the nest at some point just to see.


So we're debating, do we let her raise the keets or bring them in the house and raise them ourselves? Now that some have hatched I'd hate for them to die, but it seems rude to grab her babies after she did all that work to hatch them. We're thinking about seeing how many there are tonight and maybe taking half of them into the house and letting her keep the other half. Luckily, it is warm and sunny this week so we don't have to worry about them drowning or freezing.


These are the first eggs of any kind that have hatched on the farm so we're very excited!


Update: She's moved the keets off the nest and into a tall patch of grass. There are 2 eggs that didn't hatch, so I guess they won't. It appears there are 6 or 7 keets, but I can't get close enough to get a good count. When I tried, she flew from 10 feet away and slammed into my chest! I'm going to let her raise them....