I'm expecting!!!

Yes, I'm gonna have a baby!

31 babies, hopefully!

And I'm due in about two and a half to three weeks!

I collected all these guinea eggs from a nest found in the woods before three of our guineas were killed.  We still have eight adult guineas.  No one else has been killed since.

Last year we hatched guineas, and we learned that only about half the eggs incubated actually hatched into keets, so we are going large - thirty one guinea eggs!  If a dozen hatch I'll be happy.

We have an incubator that someone gave us.  It rotates the eggs and has trays in the bottom where we put water to keep it humid.  There's a thermometer to ensure it's at the right temp.  When I opened it to take this photo and add water the temp quickly started dropping.  We open it real quickly every day to add water and close it back up again. 

The keets are actually due on 27Apr12, but eggs always, always hatch early for me.  So I'm anticipating anywhere between 24 through 28 April will be the hatch days.  I don't want to be caught unprepared.

I'm hoping by then that a chicken hen goes broody and raises the guinea keets for me.  But so far, no broody hens.  I may have to be the mama this time - now I don't know that I'm ready for that job!  We'll see!

I'm always excited to see the colors of keets that hatch, as we have a variety of colors of adult guineas (pearl gray, white, and lavender.  Our guineas also have royal purple and coral blue in their bloodlines).  I hope we get another pure white one to replace the white one that was killed.  We only have one pure white guinea now.

Happy Easter!