Followers

Monday, May 21, 2012

Hatching Guineas


After a busy Friday birthing goat babies I was surprised to wake up Saturday morning to see the Guinea Hen eggs hatching. The eggs were hatching 3 days early so the turn cycle on the incubator was still active. This meant that chicks that were pecking holes were getting rolled around, making their job a lot more difficult

.

The first chick finally broke its way out and just laid back and rested from its efforts - whew!



The Brinsea incubator worked like a champ, all 7 eggs developed and 6 hatched out! The last chick was fully developed but had a birth defect and it never made it out of its shell on its own.



Here are five of the six Guineas, the last Guinea was added later after it hatched. Three of the little ones look to be of mixed coloring, it may be hard to sell them off!

5 comments:

  1. That is awesome! Congrats! Too bad you aren't closer, as we'd love to have mixed color guineas. They're so pretty!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Congrats on the babies. We just put peacock eggs under my sister's goose. It might be quite the surprise for her!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ohhhhh, I'll take any you don't want!!! Mixed, like that piebald guinea boy that visited you? Maybe he's the babydaddy??? Congrats on all the babies at your farm! You're lucky! :)

    ~Lynn

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Rae - I'm really looking forward to seeing what they end up looking like.

    Teresa - The keets are actually trying to huddle under a hen chick that is about two weeks old. The hen chick is actually spreading its wing to try and get them all under her! That goose is sure going to be surprised.

    Lynn - He isn't the father, I think they are a mix of a Lavender and Royal guinea. With all the incubation failures everyone is having I really feel blessed that we got such a good hatching!

    ReplyDelete