It’s Becoming Coop Weather at Night
There are three photographs of the Guinea fowl keets, including a couple of the adults, inside the coop at the end of this blog text. The photographs were all taken within about a 15 minute time span; about 3 hours before dark.
That’s right – the night time temperatures here in southeastern mountain hill country are dropping. This morning our outside thermometer read 40°F at 6 AM. And our flock of pearl grey Guinea fowl, including the keets, is now starting to make the evening trek to the coop.
When we first got our flock of Guinea fowl, we spent more than 10 weeks training them to go inside the coop at night. During this same time we trained the Guinea fowl to come to the sound of a cowbell. We accomplished these things with the use of white proso millet – a real Guinea fowl favorite treat!
We didn’t allow our flock of Guinea fowl outside of the coop yard for more than 10 weeks, while they were being trained and imprinted with the coop and coop yard. We knew that training them to be inside the coop and coop yard would become critical in the coming harsh winter months, when temperatures can drop to -50°, not including wind chill factors. I wouldn’t even want to guess how many hours we spent training the original Guinea fowl to come, and to go into the coop just before dark.
For the past couple of weeks the adult Guinea fowl have been teaching the keets about the coop and coop yard. We didn’t quite understand why the adults were making the keets sleep inside the coop back when it started 2-3 weeks ago. The adults herded them all in and stayed with them throughout the night – despite pleasant outdoor temperatures at the time. But as it turns out, the adult Guinea fowl must have known the cold weather was coming soon, and wanted the keets to be prepared. Once again, I can’t say how thankful we are that the adults are teaching the keets these things that took us so long to teach the older, original Guinea fowl.
The past few nights, the temperatures have dropped quickly after dark and remained low throughout the night. About 30 minutes before dark, a few adult Guinea fowl lead the keets up to the coop and they all find nice roosts on which to spend the night. The majority of the balance of the flock joins them shortly thereafter. Oddly, the adult males don’t seem interested in moving the keets off of any of the roosts they’ve picked.
Not all of the Guinea fowl are spending their nights in the coop just yet. There are still a few that prefer to rough it outside in the colder climes, but we’re sure they will be strutting up to the safety and warmth of the coop very shortly.
By the way, if you follow our Guinea fowl blog, we invite you to please take a moment and register for the blog. Just click on ‘Register’ on the right hand side, then type in your username and password – that’s all it takes! Once you’ve registered, you’ll be able to add comments and ask questions. We won’t be emailing you or anything like that – we just like knowing how many folks are following the blog. Thanks!
If you haven’t watched any of our Guinea fowl videos, tune into Guinea Fowl TV at http://www.youtube.com/user/GuineaFowlTV.
A Hidden Nest – Last Eggs of the Season
There are two photographs that illustrate this blog located at the bottom of the entry. Be sure to check them out, especially the photograph of all the Guinea fowl eggs stacked in the nest.
Our flock of pearl grey Guinea fowl hens has managed to establish and fill a secret nest with eggs. The nest is extremely well concealed in some tall weeds – the kind that have short, thick ‘sticking things.’ They’re not exactly thorns or needles, but they are very sharp and quite plentiful. The stickers don’t seem to bother the Guinea fowl hens, however.
To add to the safety and security of the nest, it is built on the side of a very steep, rocky hill. The rocks are large – the smallest is perhaps 200 pounds, the largest around 1,000 pounds. We have been placing the rocks on the hill over the years to help with drainage.
The other day we were outside at the picnic table having our morning coffee and my wife heard a call that she determined to be the call of a Guinea fowl hen just after laying an egg. Yes, my wife does speak some Guinea fowl. She left the table and started to investigate the area where she heard the call. When she saw more precisely where it was coming from she went in and got on her boots and small camera and then returned to the hill. After a bit of searching, she found the hidden Guinea fowl nest – overflowing with eggs.
My wife got the picture of the Guinea fowl hen at the nest, just after she had finished laying an egg. After that hen left, she took the photo of the eggs. Then she proceeded to try and count the eggs, which proved to be quite problematic because of their location. She counted between 45-50 Guinea fowl eggs in the nest.
Finding this Guinea fowl nest filled with eggs was quite a shock for us. We had concluded, because of the small numbers of eggs we’ve been able to collect of late, that the laying season was pretty much over. We’ve only been collecting 5-6 eggs a day lately, as opposed to 15-17 eggs every day earlier in the season. Of course, even with this newly found cache of eggs, it’s still clear that egg laying has simmered down for the year.
This nest is clearly shared by the entire flock of Guinea fowl hens. We do not expect a Guinea fowl hen to go broody on this nest. It’s too late in the year to hatch keets. We’re already concerned that the pearl grey Guinea fowl keets born on September 1st and 2nd will not be able to survive the winter as they will be too young. However, based on what we’ve seen the new keets doing the past few cold, windy, rainy days – our concerns might be unnescessary.
By the way, if you follow our Guinea fowl blog, we invite you to please take a moment and register for the blog. Just click on ‘Register’ on the right hand side, then type in your username and password – that’s all it takes! Once you’ve registered, you’ll be able to add comments and ask questions. We won’t be emailing you or anything like that – we just like knowing how many folks are following the blog. Thanks!
If you haven’t watched any of our Guinea fowl videos, tune into Guinea Fowl TV at http://www.youtube.com/user/GuineaFowlTV.
Team Preening – For Keets
There are three photographs of pearl grey Guinea fowl keets and adults at the end of this blog. The photographs are referred to in the text in a general fashion, so you might get more out of this if you check out the photographs first.
A few days ago I wrote a blog about “Team Preening.” In fact, I titled it Team Preening. You can read that blog by clicking here. Team preening is interesting indeed, and if you don’t want to read that blog, at least have a gander at the photos. Anyway, since I’ve already pretty much covered what goes on during team preening, I’ll skip that and move on to new information.
Team preening must be a pretty important part of the social life of Guinea fowl. I say this because the adults are actively teaching the keets how to do it – properly. By that I mean that when a keet [apparently] does something incorrect during the preening process, the adult Guinea fowl that is teaching that keet will jerk and squawk at the keet. On occasion, we’ve even seen the adult Guinea fowl give the keet a peck or two. The pecks are not that rough, but still, they seem to quickly get the attention of the offending keet.
Team preening reminds me very much of what I see monkeys do at the zoo and on documentaries. The main difference is that the Guinea fowl seem only interested in preening each others neck areas – down to where the feathers really take over the body. We have seen the odd peck or two on the body, but as a rule the one doing the preening stays on the neck area.
In the photographs below, two of the photographs show an adult teaching a keet how to preen another Guinea fowl. One of the photographs shows a keet preening another keet. We’ve noticed that the keets don’t preen each other for as long as the adults do. It’s not just that keets are that much smaller and thus faster to preen, it’s like the keets get bored with it quickly. This could, perhaps, indicate that the keets do not need another Guinea fowl to help with preening at their tender ages. Perhaps, as the Guinea fowl get older, they require more assistance to rid their neck areas of unwanted dirt, insects, mites, bad feathers, etc. Of course it could also just be that Guinea fowl keets, like human children, have shamefully short attention spans and don’t like doing the same thing for too long. As with many other Guinea fowl behaviors, we may never really know.
By the way, if you follow our Guinea fowl blog, we invite you to please take a moment and register for the blog. Just click on ‘Register’ on the right hand side, then type in your username and password – that’s all it takes! Once you’ve registered, you’ll be able to add comments and ask questions. We won’t be emailing you or anything like that – we just like knowing how many folks are following the blog. Thanks!
If you haven’t watched any of our Guinea fowl videos, tune into Guinea Fowl TV at http://www.youtube.com/user/GuineaFowlTV.
Keet Wing Development Photographs
There are 4 photographs of brand new wings on several pearl grey Guinea fowl keets at the end of this blog text. I won’t really be referencing the photographs during the text, but you might want to skip ahead and take a look. I dare say these are some of the best stop action photographs of the keets that we’ve been able to capture.
I remember when I was a kid growing up. Naturally, as a male I was eager to spring up to a whopping height – and the quicker I got there, the better. Measurements didn’t mean much to me then, so I created things to “check” my growth – things that did matter to me. Like jumping up when walking through doors in the house, trying to touch the top jamb. Seeing how many of the steps leading into the house I could jump up at one time and so forth.
I think Guinea fowl keets must also have things they use to mark their growth. Surely, when their wings arrive, it must be a red letter day. And it’s amazing how fast the keets’ wings do grow. They go from tiny little ‘hairy’ bumps to feathered wings in just over 2 weeks. Only a few days after the keets get their wings, they start using them. It starts with running and flapping – which must give them a sense of being lighter. As this exercise progresses and their wings grow, the keets will eventually be able to achieve very short glides. Then longer ones, followed by the ability to actually achieve lift.
Once the keets’ wings and flight skills develop adequately, they all start seeking higher roosts: rocks, roosting bars – anything higher than the ground level – and the higher the better. They jump from the height, wings spread, sometimes flapping, and they achieve slower descents first, followed by longer flights.
If you look closely at the photographs you can see that the ratio of the keets’ wings to their bodies is pretty impressive. Big wings, little bodies = easier flying. Of course, our pearl grey Guinea fowl keets will never grow up to be great flyers like swallows or falcons. But they will learn the art of the glide – something they do extremely well. I’ve watched our adults glide distances of several hundred yards, when starting from a high vantage point.
Enjoy the photographs of the keets’ new wings – we did!
By the way, if you follow our Guinea fowl blog, we invite you to please take a moment and register for the blog. Just click on ‘Register’ on the right hand side, then type in your username and password – that’s all it takes! Once you’ve registered, you’ll be able to add comments and ask questions. We won’t be emailing you or anything like that – we just like knowing how many folks are following the blog. Thanks!
If you haven’t watched any of our Guinea fowl videos, tune into Guinea Fowl TV at http://www.youtube.com/user/GuineaFowlTV.
More Keet Photographs
There are four photographs of pearl grey Guinea fowl keets at the end of this short blog. Be sure to see them before signing off!
If you thought that keet photo week would be the last time you’d see photos of keets in the blog, well, surprise! I’ll just go ahead and tell you that my wife is mesmerized by these keets, and spends quite a bit of time following them around with a camera. She took pictures of our first Guinea fowl keets, but she was nothing like she is with this batch.
Of course, with our first group of keets, she was concerned about doing the right thing for the growing birds. She spent a great deal of her keet time reading, and just generally fretting over every little thing about them. This time, since the Guinea fowl hens are doing all the heavy lifting, she is able to walk around with the sub-flocks, take photos and enjoy the unending antics of the Guinea fowl keets and adults.
I will mention that the photo with the two orange circles is showing two of the keets that have managed to get to the higher bar on the Guinea fowl jungle gym. No small feat for the keets, as they are still awkward with using their wings. If you’d like to see a description or comments on any of the photos, simply hover your cursor over them for a second or two and a small box with the text should appear.
By the way, if you follow our Guinea fowl blog, we invite you to please take a moment and register for the blog. Just click on ‘Register’ on the right hand side, then type in your username and password – that’s all it takes! Once you’ve registered, you’ll be able to add comments and ask questions. We won’t be emailing you or anything like that – we just like knowing how many folks are following the blog. Thanks!
If you haven’t watched any of our Guinea fowl videos, tune into Guinea Fowl TV at http://www.youtube.com/user/GuineaFowlTV.
Teaching The Keets For Us
There are two photographs of Guinea fowl keets at the end of this blog. They are lightly referenced in the text, so you might want to go to the end and check out the photographs before reading.
One of the two best things about having our pearl grey Guinea fowl raise their own keets – as opposed to us incubating them, raising them in a brooder until they are a few weeks old and then introducing them to the flock – is that the Guinea fowl moms do all the teaching for us.
Teaching Guinea fowl keets some things takes a long time. The two things that top this category would be 1) coming to the coop at night and 2) coming to the sound of the cowbell. It took us many weeks and countless hours to teach our initial flock of pearl grey Guinea fowl keets these two things.
As you can see in the photos below, our Guinea fowl keets are enjoying their millet with their adult caregivers – both male and female adult Guinea fowl take care of the keets. We really appreciate the fact that the hens – and often the males – have taught the keets to go to the coop when they hear the sound of the cowbell. This saves us a lot of time and energy, and I am sure is easier on the keets.
Until a couple of days ago, the keets always came into the coop yard – which is where we always serve their millet treats – along with the adults. But just recently, we’ve noticed some of the older, larger keets running ahead of their quasi-siblings and the adults to get to the millet faster. I have to assume that this confirms that the keets have learned what to do when the cowbell rings.
To reward both the keets and the adults, we are doing a cowbell ringing and millet serving just a bit more often for a few days. We hope this reinforces the training, and also makes the Guinea fowl happy. We’ll keep up these extra treats for a week or so more.
Yup – there’s no doubt about it – the Guinea fowl hens and males are much better, faster keet instructors than we will ever be. And we greatly appreciate that!
By the way, if you follow our Guinea fowl blog, we invite you to please take a moment and register for the blog. Just click on ‘Register’ on the right hand side, then type in your username and password – that’s all it takes! Once you’ve registered, you’ll be able to add comments and ask questions. We won’t be emailing you or anything like that – we just like knowing how many folks are following the blog. Thanks!
If you haven’t watched any of our Guinea fowl videos, tune into Guinea Fowl TV at http://www.youtube.com/user/GuineaFowlTV.
