Guinea Keet Hatching Success - First Births on the Farm

New parents huddled over their keets in the rain

The influx of baby animals continues. This time with the first actual births on the farm. Our broody guinea hen hatched out her eggs. Of the five remaining eggs, three hatched. If you remember, she started with 23 of her own eggs and 1 turkey egg. About 2.5 weeks into it she lost 15 eggs, including the turkey egg, to a predator. She sat on the remaining nine eggs until today, at which point there were only five left (something must have come last night for the other four). Three hatched and now there are tiny little guinea keets running around chasing her.

Her timing has been less than perfect. First she chose to sit on the eggs through a serious heat wave. Then she hatched out on the first rainy day we've had in months. It literally rained all day, and it wasn't very warm either. She managed through it though and we're very proud of her. She lost a ton of body weight over the course of those four weeks and now she has three healthy babies. We want to see if she can raise them.

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Elusive Blue


Blue

Not everything goes as planned on the farm. Before moving to Tennessee we put in over a year’s worth of research and planning to make the start-up as “smooth” as possible. Since then lots of stuff has gone according to plan, but just as much has not. Things not going according to plan is what we spend most of our time figuring out, fixing, and trying not to do again.

With the dogs we’ve been very lucky. Our three girls, Sophie, Sheba and Izzy, all stay within the perimeter fence, they love the animals, they love us and they hate anything that tries to get inside the fence. So far they've been fantastic and we haven't had any predator problems. However, because of our property's layout and the amount of land we’re managing it will make sense for us to have more guard dogs as we expand. We’ll be running goats in different paddocks. Bucks will be separate from Does. Kids will be separate. Cows and pigs are all run separately. In addition, the land is split between three (or four, depending on how you look at it) distinct parcels. It’s too much to ask of three dogs and we don’t want to set them up for failure.

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Broody Guinea Update - Nest Raided

Our broody guinea hen is still gettin' broody. She's entering her fourth week, which should be the final week. Luckily, she chose a nice shady spot because she also chose the middle of  heat-wave to sit on those eggs.

About a week ago I noticed her off the nest looking down at the nest perplexedly. She was kind of circling the eggs and bobbing her head up and down. I walked over to see what was up and she quickly sat on it. Later that day she was off the eggs eating so Sweetbreads went to look and lo and behold only nine eggs remained. Previously, there were 23 plus one giant turkey egg that we snuck under her. Now 14 eggs were missing and the turkey egg was gone too. I imagine there's a bloated snake out there somehwere. No eggshells in sight, something made off with 'em.

The nest as it stands todayNest prior to egg raid

Wednesday or Thursday she should hopefully hatch out the remainder, assuming whatever ate the others doesn't come back for seconds...