Keet and Chicken Update

The 9 guinea keets are now 8 days old.  They have doubled in size, but they are still very SMALL, if you consider they were the size of an egg when we got them.  They are very active, and their wings are starting to develop.  They totally believe that Bella the chicken hen is their mother; they listen to her every call and sleep under her wings.  Bella has developed into a good mother; she lets the babies eat before she eats, she protects the babies from us and other curious chickens.  The other chickens have tried to attack the babies, so we still keep Bella and the babies separated in their own section of the coop.  When something startles the babies, they tend to run in any direction and scatter, which I think would be bad if they were out with the chickens.  

Here is a video of Bella and the keets that I made this morning.



In other news, Leggy the rooster's eye has totally healed up.  It just took about 3 days of antibiotic water and he was all better.  When he couldn't see out of one eye he got very scared around the other roosters and ran from them all the time.  He wasn't good at judging distances, and had a tough time jumping up to the roost at night.  But when he got better, he got his spunk back, starting chasing the lesser roosters again, went back to his favorite hen, Freckles, and is able to sleep on the roosts just fine again.

This morning when I was in the chicken coop I watched as one of the hens, Chloe, laid an egg in a nest box.  I've seen this before, but never got it on film.  It's interesting how a hen stands all up, concentrates, and seems to work so hard to lay an egg.

And here she just laid the egg and is checking it.  You can barely see it under her.

Have a good weekend!