Guinea keets raised by chickens - photos

 Who doesn't love keets!  Our keets are growing up.  They still live with their chicken mama hens.  The black hen is named Katie and has 5 keets.  The red hen is named Doritos and has 7 keets.  The keets are flying now, and roosting up high in the chicken coop.

Here are some pictures of the adult guineas, the birth parents of the keets. The photos are terrible quality, taken with my phone and emailed to myself- sorry! :(

Little Deer is still Here

This morning around 5am I was walking through my house and I was shocked to see the thin face of a deer peering in  my front window watching me!

No worries - it was just Little Deer, who comes up to my front porch every day.  I'd prefer she didn't come up and eat my bushes and flowers, but alas, this is where she lives. 

Good morning, Little Deer!

Guinea Keets have Hatched

I don't have any pictures ready for this post, but I'm not going to wait for pics.  If I wait to take a photo, the post just wont get posted.  Sorry.  There will be pics in the future!

A little over 28 days ago I found a guinea nest in the woods.  Our guineas free range and it's near impossible to find a nest.  I collected 6 eggs the first day, and put 2 fake eggs in the nest in return.  Then the next 2 days I collected 3 eggs each day, for a grand total of 12 eggs.  I was so excited.

I wasn't thinking about guinea eggs for breakfast - - -NO!  I was thinking about new guinea keets!!!  Our guinea flock is always fighting foxes, hawks, owls, eagles, you name it.  The guineas always lose.  We do our best to fight along with the guineas, so I guess it's the guinea/human team against the fox/hawk/owl/eagle team.  We've lost 2 guineas in 2014.  Our beautiful pure white girl was recently killed by a bird, either a hawk, owl or eagle.  She was the last pure white guinea.  And a dark brown guinea girl was killed by a fox.  We have 7 light grey colored ones and 3 dark brown guineas left.  I like to get keets every year or two to keep the guinea flock going. 

So - back to the eggs.  I always, always have broody (chicken) hens.  I don't know why my hens always go broody.  So, 3 weeks ago, I had a red sex link named Doritos and a black Ameracauna mix named Katie that were broody, so I divided up the eggs between them.  And in the last few days, the guinea keets have hatched!  They are sooooo cute!  Keets are much more active than chicks.  They are running all over the coop already.

Katie has 5 keets - 4 grey and 1 pure white! :) Yeah, another pure white one!
Doritos has 7 keets - 3 dark brown, 3 light grey and 1 that's pure white with brown spots/patches!!  Of course I like the spotted one best, because it's unique. One egg didn't hatch,  We broke it open and saw it was not developed at all, it was nasty rotten egg.  I don't know what happened to that one.

We setup half the coop as a baby coop, and divided it in half again so each mama hen has her own private area with her own babies.  The mama hens don't realize the babies aren't even chickens, they are both very happy with their babies.  They worked hard sitting on those eggs for 28 days!

I will get some keet pics soon.