Keet Adventures
I went out to do my normal chores at the start of this week and got a pleasant surprise. Melise and I were kneeling next to the chicken house getting ready to collect eggs when a pair of guineas went walking past. Somewhere in the back of my brain I knew something was not normal. I glanced up quickly and then looked back at my work . . . then I looked up again because I had seen a bunch of little fluffy things gathered at the feet of the guineas - keets!
Keets are baby guineas, in case you didn't know. To see more about keets go here .
Well, we had been missing two guineas for about a month, which is the time it takes for eggs to hatch. Roy had looked everywhere for a nest and hadn't found one. He said he could hear them calling at night, so he knew they were still there. We weren't sure if they had turned wild or what, but now we know!
So what did I do when I saw the keets? I ran to get my camera, of course!
This was the best picture I got because the little things move so quickly that the camera didn't want to focus on them. The movement also made them hard to count. I see 15 in this picture, but while I was out there I counted anywhere from 17-20. I may have counted a few keets twice . . .
As we sat there admiring the keets, another curious visitor appeared.
That's our cat Franky on the right and the keets are on the left (they're hard to see, I know). I thought about shooing Franky away, but then I decided to see how the guineas would react to him.
In the above picture you can see Franky start to stalk forward. The mother hen is in the middle of the adult guineas with her back to us. What you can't tell from the picture is that she is lowering her head and raising her wings in preparation to attack . . .
Suddenly, the hen flew at Franky claws first and they disappeared in a blur of fur and feathers!
It only lasted a second because Franky took off running. Neither were injured and Franky got the message!
Moments later, all was calm again as seen in the picture below. By the way, that is the male and female together as mating pairs almost always tend to be while they guard nests and keets.
The guineas have seemed to watch out for their own pretty well until this morning. Roy and I woke up before 6am to a lot of "buckwheat!" (that's the call of the female), warning crows from the males, and cries of distress from a keet. By the time we got out, we found another of our cats, Noni, with a dead keet. We were both pretty upset. We went looking for the other keets, but couldn't find them. Roy thought he saw the parent guineas returning to their nest, which we've decided is south of our house by an old, fallen down barn.
We gave up looking for the keets and went back in the house. After a few minutes, we heard some keets crying. Roy ran out to discover that they were scattered all over our yard, across two or three acres, hiding in various places. The best we can guess is that something attacked the little guinea family and they scattered, which is instinctual behavior. After everything calmed down, the keets started calling out for mom and trying to make their way back to the group. So Roy started the slow project of retrieving them while I kept the cats distracted.
It was a difficult process because a keet would only cry when it thought no one was around. As soon as Roy would get really close, the keet would fall silent, so he would have to look for the little camouflaged bodies in tall grasses. Not easy. When he did get a hold of a keet, he deposited them in the dense lilac bushes next to the chicken house. A guinea hen came along after a little bit and took charge of them. What's interesting is that we're pretty sure that this hen is not the original mom. We're guessing that she recently turned broody , which made her willing to adopt!
Keeping the stray keets safe from the cats was also difficult. There are seven adult cats and just one of me, so I couldn't watch them all. They are much better bird hunters than we are, of course, plus they're faster and quieter, so catching a keet for them is easy. We lost one more to a cat and rescued three or four from close encounters. Don't judge the cats too hard. They're only following their instincts and those same instincts keep the rodent population down, which is why we keep cats in the first place.
In the end, 10-12 keets ended up under the adoptive hen! Roy caught most of them, but some found their way on their own or with a little help from the adult guineas who seemed to herd the keets in the right direction. We've seen them a few times throughout the day, grazing happily. We still have hopes that the original guinea mom is hiding at her nest with a few more keets. We'll see what the future holds!
Keets are baby guineas, in case you didn't know. To see more about keets go here .
Well, we had been missing two guineas for about a month, which is the time it takes for eggs to hatch. Roy had looked everywhere for a nest and hadn't found one. He said he could hear them calling at night, so he knew they were still there. We weren't sure if they had turned wild or what, but now we know!
So what did I do when I saw the keets? I ran to get my camera, of course!
This was the best picture I got because the little things move so quickly that the camera didn't want to focus on them. The movement also made them hard to count. I see 15 in this picture, but while I was out there I counted anywhere from 17-20. I may have counted a few keets twice . . .
As we sat there admiring the keets, another curious visitor appeared.
That's our cat Franky on the right and the keets are on the left (they're hard to see, I know). I thought about shooing Franky away, but then I decided to see how the guineas would react to him.
In the above picture you can see Franky start to stalk forward. The mother hen is in the middle of the adult guineas with her back to us. What you can't tell from the picture is that she is lowering her head and raising her wings in preparation to attack . . .
Suddenly, the hen flew at Franky claws first and they disappeared in a blur of fur and feathers!
It only lasted a second because Franky took off running. Neither were injured and Franky got the message!
Moments later, all was calm again as seen in the picture below. By the way, that is the male and female together as mating pairs almost always tend to be while they guard nests and keets.
The guineas have seemed to watch out for their own pretty well until this morning. Roy and I woke up before 6am to a lot of "buckwheat!" (that's the call of the female), warning crows from the males, and cries of distress from a keet. By the time we got out, we found another of our cats, Noni, with a dead keet. We were both pretty upset. We went looking for the other keets, but couldn't find them. Roy thought he saw the parent guineas returning to their nest, which we've decided is south of our house by an old, fallen down barn.
We gave up looking for the keets and went back in the house. After a few minutes, we heard some keets crying. Roy ran out to discover that they were scattered all over our yard, across two or three acres, hiding in various places. The best we can guess is that something attacked the little guinea family and they scattered, which is instinctual behavior. After everything calmed down, the keets started calling out for mom and trying to make their way back to the group. So Roy started the slow project of retrieving them while I kept the cats distracted.
It was a difficult process because a keet would only cry when it thought no one was around. As soon as Roy would get really close, the keet would fall silent, so he would have to look for the little camouflaged bodies in tall grasses. Not easy. When he did get a hold of a keet, he deposited them in the dense lilac bushes next to the chicken house. A guinea hen came along after a little bit and took charge of them. What's interesting is that we're pretty sure that this hen is not the original mom. We're guessing that she recently turned broody , which made her willing to adopt!
Keeping the stray keets safe from the cats was also difficult. There are seven adult cats and just one of me, so I couldn't watch them all. They are much better bird hunters than we are, of course, plus they're faster and quieter, so catching a keet for them is easy. We lost one more to a cat and rescued three or four from close encounters. Don't judge the cats too hard. They're only following their instincts and those same instincts keep the rodent population down, which is why we keep cats in the first place.
In the end, 10-12 keets ended up under the adoptive hen! Roy caught most of them, but some found their way on their own or with a little help from the adult guineas who seemed to herd the keets in the right direction. We've seen them a few times throughout the day, grazing happily. We still have hopes that the original guinea mom is hiding at her nest with a few more keets. We'll see what the future holds!
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