Tag Archives: Guinea Fowl

Mixed Blessing

25 Thursday Oct 2012

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In my previous blog, I wrote about the joy of discovering our guinea hen with her newly hatched brood of keets and my excitment about how all the adults were caretaking the babies (see Cooperative Edge?).  I hoped to watch the tiny, adorable little beings develop into full-grown birds. 

When I first noticed Mother Hen with her babies, I spotted at least 15 keets.  I had difficulty counting as sometimes they were underneath one guinea fowl, then moved to another.  And when they were out-from-under, they ran around so rapidly, peeping and chirping as they went, that I had difficulty counting. 

The adult guinea fowl initially hovered over their babies, protecting them from the cold, and moved around very little.  But as day one moved into days two and three, their attentiveness to the baby keets appeared to wane.  While they continued protecting and teaching the keets, their focus turned to foraging for food.  They moved at a faster pace and travelled further before stopping to eat or rest.

I watched tiny little bodies scurrying, trying to keep up with the adults.  They encountered many obstacles that the adults readily walked over.  A small stone became an insurmountable mountain and a twig a hazardous zone that their tiny legs had difficulty negotiating.  But try they did.  The feisty little souls scrambled up and down, running as fast as they could after the adults.  A noisy little bunch, for they peeped, and peeped and peeped.

While the adults still tended their baby keets, they appeared oblivious to the keets’ inability to rapidly negotiate terrain with tiny bodies and fragile state.  I watched in despair as the parents ran ahead, seemingly unconcerned about what was happening behind them and despite a keet’s loud frantic peeps.

At the end of each day, Mother Hen  found what she considered to be a safe place to spend the night and gathered her keets under her there.  Once I located her under a saw horse next to Harmony Center. Other nights I didn’t know where she slept, but she and her brood re-appeared in the morning, sitting outside the guinea house, waiting for her “husband” and other pals to join her.

I thought, “if only Mama would take them into the coop. Then I could lock them all up for a while – keep them safe, give the keets a chance to grow stronger.”  Hoping that she might, praying that she would, I readjusted the ramp into the coop to ensure that the keets could readily walk inside.  Doing everything I could think of to entice Mama inside, I sprinkled food on the ramp and turned on the light.

As one day led into the next, my baby keet count went from 15 to 10, then down to 8.  I found two small bodies sprawled, lifeless on the ground.  Gathering these remnants of once spirited beings, I said a few prayers and buried one white and one speckled inert form.

Day four dawned, and as the day developed, one after another baby keet succumbed.  Finding two little souls struggling after the pack, I picked each one up separately and held him, or her, for a while, thinking that I might warm the probably cold body.  But when I put him / her down, I watched each little body struggle to run, only to fall over, struggle again, and fall yet again.  I realized that they’d each broken a leg, probably caught on a twig, or a rock, or who knows what.

During the afternoon, I buried 2 more bodies, and watched two spirited little beings running through the brush, still managing to keep up with the pack.  At the end of the day, when I went to lock the guinea house, all five adults were there.  But none of their babies.

After all the joy and excitement, I feel deep sorrow, broken hearted.  Such feisty little souls, so full of energy and happy peeps – broken legs, exhaustion, cold – I have no idea how each one perished.  They struggled and suffered.  I hope not too much.

Walking around outside, I miss seeing tiny exuberant bodies scurrying around.  I miss hearing boisterous, happy peeps.  Yet those feisty little keets live on – inside me.

Living on Harmony Farm, experiencing nature’s cycles, carries mixed blessings.  Despite my sorrow, I feel very blessed. 

Cooperative Edge?

18 Thursday Oct 2012

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After yet another Lyme disease infection, my husband and I decided to bring guinea fowl onto Harmony Farm.  These attractive birds supposedly eat ticks and we hoped that their presence would reduce our exposure to Lyme.  While we’ll never know what impact they’ve had on the tick population, for we continue to pull the little buggers off our bodies, we enjoy watching guinea fowl run around the land. 

When male cocks compete for a female, the two birds chase each other around a large area, running rapidly with their heads tilted forward, their bodies seemly still, and their feet moving at an amazingly rapid pace.  Round and around they go.  Sometimes they take flight for a while, then resume their on-ground race.  When one catches up with the other, he grabs onto the other one’s feathers, they scuffle a bit, then resume their race until one finally gives up the chase.

The victor wins the coveted hen, which is quite a prize for guinea hens are monogamous.  During mating season, the loyal pair roam around foraging together.  I dubbed one particular couple “Romeo and Juliet.” 

Living where we do, with predators all around, our once-large guinea flock dwindled down to five – one female and four males.  Then one evening, only four males were roosting in their coop when I locked them up for the night.  I worried that the female might have met her demise, but held onto the hope that she might be sitting on eggs somewhere.

Unlike birds who nest in trees, guinea hens lay eggs on the ground.  During summer months, guinea hens will often make a nest, lay an egg in it day after day, and when a suitable number of eggs are there (usually over 30), they “go broody” – which involves sitting on the eggs both day and night with a short break now and then to eat and drink. 

As a broody hen is like a “sitting duck,” she often falls prey to animals and hawks searching for a tasty meal.  And if she hatches her brood, they readily succumb to a variety of fates.  We’ve never had a flock born in the wild survive more than a day or two. 

A couple of weeks ago I saw the guinea hen, and heard her distinctive sound.  “Yea, she’s alive” I thought, “I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”  And when the males dashed out the minute I opened the door to their coop, I assumed they were off to visit the mother-to-be.

Then yesterday, mother hen appeared with her brood.  She was sitting outside the locked-up coop, waiting.  And many tiny little bodies – white ones, speckled ones, various shades of black and white ones – poked out from underneath her body, came out for a minute, then popped back under.  Quite a sight to behold!!

I let the males out of the coop, and something amazing happened.  They gathered around mother hen and sat.  When I returned a little while later, I saw the baby keets moving from under one bird to another, to another.  The males were caretaking the keets, keeping them warm.  And not just papa.  All the males.

In all my years on the farm, I’ve never seen such a cooperative caretaking effort.  The baby keets trusted the males, seemed to already know them.  And the males adjusted their bodies to accommodate the little keets moving around beneath them.  They also pushed them under their bodies, just like a female hen behaves.   

As the day progressed, I watched the whole flock move around just a bit.  Like mother hens, the males called the keets over when a morsel of food was found.   The keets ran back and forth between all the adults, under them, and between them.  Often the mother hen was up and about, preening and eating, while the males were caretaking the babies, giving her a break.

Reflecting on this unusual behavior, I think about the Great Turning, where partnership and cooperation will hopefully replace competition and strife.  I wonder, could these guinea fowl be figuring this out?   Could they be demonstrating that the path to survival lies not along the road of individual separateness, but on the path of harmony, of cooperation, and of sharing?  

Whatever its reason, I hope that this cooperative approach might bode well for the adorable little newborn keets.  Dare I hope that these babies will survive?