Guinea Gettin' Broody


Guinea hen gettin' broody with it

One of our guinea hens is gettin' broody these days. Actually, she’s the only adult guinea hen we have right now. For the past few days she’s been sitting on about 20 eggs tucked away in a strip of trees and vines.

For a while she was laying her eggs in the salvaged-barn chicken coop we built. We always left one or two eggs in there so she would keep laying in that spot and we could eat her eggs. Guinea eggs are pretty tasty. Very rich, lots of yolk.

One day a few weeks ago she figured out our game and said to hell with laying eggs in the coop. She was gonna find another spot. After all, her and Guinea Cent wanted to start a family. That’s cool with us, so we didn’t bother to hunt down her nesting spot. Eventually we figured she’d get broody and we’d see where she’d been hiding them.

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Egg Mobile for the Guineas - a.k.a The Guinea Mobile


Towing the Guinea Mobile out to pasture. It dual purposes as a shelter and shade shack for goats and guard dogs

Most of our readers are probably familiar with egg mobiles. Egg mobiles are the glorified apparatuses used by famed alternative farmer Joel Salatin and many other small-scale farmers. The idea is simple: A mobile chicken coop that is moved around with ruminant animals (typically cows) in order to clean up the pasture (dig through cow patties) and provide a free-range habitat for chickens to express their chicken-ness (eat lots of bugs and bathe in the dirt). 

We love the idea of egg mobiles. Birds out on pasture living a natural life, not crammed three to a cage, forced to produce eggs under artificial light. Egg mobiles fit with our vision for Little Seed and one day we may actually have a real egg mobile. For now though, we have a Guinea Mobile. 

 

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Meanwhile, Back at the Farm


Janis, showing us how she really feels...When stuff like the piglet escapade happens everything else on the farm stands still. No goats need milking, no pastures rotating, meals cooking, gardens weeding.

We wish.

In fact, not only does everything still happen, none of the animals even seem to care! The goats were actually perturbed by the whole thing. When Bridget and Mayday would come in for milking Bridget would walk right over to the edge of the fence and snort loudly at the little gilt piglets.

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