Blue Heron Farm Alpacas

Well, none of the baby guineas survived, so I decided that next time around, I would take some of the eggs and incubate them myself in my handy-dandy styrofoam incubator (bought online). Then I would take any keets that hatched and put them in my brooder -- which is very clearly a covered cat-litter box with a lightbulb holder added on. (The things you can find on the internet!) And finally, once they have "brooded" for six weeks and are all feathered out, I will put them in a secure coop next to the barn for four weeks so they know where home is and are big enough to avoid predators. 

I built the coop out of pallets (a project that began last year as a goat shelter, but which basically fell apart over the winter), covered it in fine wire mesh and roofed it with old shingles that were lying around in the barn. Voila!

Since this picture, I have added a door, which opens upward and is hinged to the center support. (Oh, and Niblet the goat walked in to explore right after I was finished -- perhaps the structure will do double duty.)

And then I noticed that of the four surviving adult guineas, I was now seeing only three. And then I saw the fourth with them. Then only three for several days. And it finally dawned on me that the other pair -- not the ones who just had a hatch -- must be nesting. But not in the barn. So I stalked the male (I assume) of the second pair, and noticed he was returning to a certain area regularly -- near my fence, but on the other side, on my neighbor's heavily wooded/shrubbed property. So I went exploring and -- lo and behold! -- I found her, calmly nesting under underbrush. According to my internet experts, guinea nests in the wild are doomed to failure. (Hell -- mine safe in the barn was doomed to failure!) It is recommended that you move the nest, bird and all, to safety. So I enlisted my neighbor's strapping son, dressed in long sleeves and heavy gloves (apparently a guinea bite is to be avoided at all costs). The plan: He would grab the mama, I would take the eggs and transfer them to a pre-made nest in the barn, he would then place the mama back on her eggs and run for dear life. However, the best laid plans. . .Before he could get a grip on her, she fled. So I went ahead and tranferred the eggs -- about 25 -- and set about creating a breadcrumb trail from outside to the nest. (Guineas love white bread.) I also took 12 of the eggs and cranked up my incubator. By evening, no mama on the barn nest. Twenty four hours later, the breadcrumb trail had been gobbled up -- all the way up to and even into the nest, but mama was happily pecking around the yard and pasture. I guess she figured she had been absolved of her responsibility and could now go on about her carefree ways.

I figure she'd been sitting for a week, and the eggs have been in the incubator for another week, so we should have hatch in two more weeks, give or take. I "candled" the eggs (look it up!), and of the 12, nine are developing. (Okay, you shine a bright light on the egg from underneath and you can see inside it. Quite cool, actually.)  And now I've noticed that mama #1 has gone missing. So she is off somewhere try, trying again.

Speaking of population explosions, a whole squadron of geese visited for a few days (as they had last year -- perhaps its the avian equivalent of a guided bus tour). Thanks goodness they didn't tarry -- we're talking more than 50 birds. Lots of goose poop.

More welcome are the snowy egrets -- most recently a pair.

And that's the news on the winged population of Blue Heron Farm -- more later.