# Can I move a guinea nest?



## BlueRidgeFarms (Mar 23, 2014)

I'm wondering if a guinea will stay sitting on her eggs if I move her and the eggs from the outdoors into a coop. 

Background: My wife got a dozen keets last spring with the hope that they would become a self-sustaining bug control patrol for the farmstead. By this spring we were down to 6, mainly due to predators. The survivors did start several nests, at least 5 that we found. Again, mostly due to predators, only one nest hatched out. (that one was built next to the farmhouse!) So we now have four adults and 20 keets. We have the hen and keets in a secure coop so I feel confident we will go into winter at full strength. 

Thinking ahead to next summer. If we find a guinea nest before the predators do, I would like to move it into the coop immediately. Any idea what kind of success rate I can expect with that? Success = guinea hen continues sitting on her eggs in the nest box in the coop. Would moving her at night help? 

Any thoughts? Mostly I just wanted an excuse to post a picture of the keets! :dance:


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## KSALguy (Feb 14, 2006)

No. As soon as a guinea feels her nest has been found she will abandon it and start over. You can pull all but 5 or 6 eggs and incubate them your self or under a hen and she may keep laying in the same spot. You will get better results doing it that way. guineas do not make good mothers in our climate when free ranging small keets. Once they are few weeks old they can keep up in the wet grass.


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## Forcast (Apr 15, 2014)

yep they suck at parenting


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## barnbilder (Jul 1, 2005)

You can move chickens but not guineas. Usually if you even take eggs away, they will quit using that nest. One old fella swore that if you used a wooden spoon to take their eggs they would keep laying in that spot, as long as you left two or three. Said that they could smell where you had touched their nest. My experience has been that trying to move a guinea nest into a pen results in a guinea pacing back and forth on a bunch of broken eggs and trying to break it's neck on that pen. The last time I tried to move a guinea, (which was the night before I shot all of the guineas that weren't penned up and threw them to the hogs and called a guy to come get the rest), it flew up and hit me in the face, and then flew through my kitchen window.


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## BlueRidgeFarms (Mar 23, 2014)

barnbilder said:


> You can move chickens but not guineas. Usually if you even take eggs away, they will quit using that nest. One old fella swore that if you used a wooden spoon to take their eggs they would keep laying in that spot, as long as you left two or three. Said that they could smell where you had touched their nest. My experience has been that trying to move a guinea nest into a pen results in a guinea pacing back and forth on a bunch of broken eggs and trying to break it's neck on that pen. The last time I tried to move a guinea, (which was the night before I shot all of the guineas that weren't penned up and threw them to the hogs and called a guy to come get the rest), it flew up and hit me in the face, and then flew through my kitchen window.


:hysterical:

Ok, that's funny to anyone who ever raised guineas!! 

Yeah, we knew that they're not great mothers. Hence the reason there was a secure coop set up ready to go as soon as we saw a trail of lost keets. This hen really was doing a good job, at least for the half a day we let her run loose. Plus daddy was keeping the kittens away. Plan is to keep them in there for a few weeks until the keets can keep up.

I really don't want to raise anymore incubator keets, I want some kind of hen over them. Maybe we'll have to find some silkies eventually. 
One of the nests was flooded this spring, but they continued laying there. So we marked all the existing eggs and then collected the new eggs. That went on for a week, then one of the hens tried to set on it and we destroyed it. 

So our guineas haven't been following the typical playbook very well, maybe one will let us move her. I won't plan on it though.


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## BlueRidgeFarms (Mar 23, 2014)

Just wanted to post another update. Haven't lost any keets, still have all 23. We kept them closed up for the first 4 weeks, then set up the woodshed for them and let them free-range. So far the hen is leading them around the farmstead during the day and bring them back in to roost every night. The keets should be well imprinted in the woodshed before they quit following the hen. 

Just wanted to share the picture, hope that's alright. :dance:


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## Belfrybat (Feb 21, 2003)

I miss my guineas! The entertainment factor they provide is priceless. If you want a real good laugh, give them a mirror to play in front of. Keeps them occupied for hours trying to talk to the guinea in the mirror.


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## nehimama (Jun 18, 2005)

In my experience, the best thing to do with a guinea nest is to put the eggs under a broody chicken hen.


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## FarmerKat (Jul 3, 2014)

nehimama said:


> In my experience, the best thing to do with a guinea nest is to put the eggs under a broody chicken hen.


I was going to suggest that as well. The hen will train them to come back to coop at night.

The only guineas I had were keets that were given to me along with some week old chicks and they were raised together. They always came back to the coop and acted like nice little chickens in that regard.


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## BlueRidgeFarms (Mar 23, 2014)

FarmerKat said:


> I was going to suggest that as well. The hen will train them to come back to coop at night.
> 
> The only guineas I had were keets that were given to me along with some week old chicks and they were raised together. They always came back to the coop and acted like nice little chickens in that regard.


So far the guinea hen has been a pretty good mother. She's leading them back into the shed every night, and even taking them back in a couple times during the day for feed. The rest of the day she's leading them around eating bugs and resting under shrubs. 

The only real problem we've had with letting guineas hatch their own eggs has been the location of their nests. They've usually chosen spots on the edge of the farmstead that are susceptible to predators. Eventually we'll need to get some silkies or similar breeds if we want to continue with guineas, but I had wondered if it would be possible to avoid that. Probably not possible. 

Mostly this thread was just a place for me to post a couple pictures of the keets.


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## Guest (Sep 10, 2016)

BlueRidgeFarms said:


> So far the guinea hen has been a pretty good mother. She's leading them back into the shed every night, and even taking them back in a couple times during the day for feed. The rest of the day she's leading them around eating bugs and resting under shrubs.


Remarkable. Most of my experience had been with guinea hens making bad mothers.


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## barnbilder (Jul 1, 2005)

The poster is in Nebraska. Probably a lot drier out there, compared to here in the humid East. Guineas need dry when they are little. They try to follow a guinea hen in soggy, dew covered grass and they don't make it. The guinea hens seem to range a little more than chickens, and the ones I have dealt with seemed to be a little less attentive than chickens.


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## BlueRidgeFarms (Mar 23, 2014)

barnbilder said:


> The poster is in Nebraska. Probably a lot drier out there, compared to here in the humid East. Guineas need dry when they are little. They try to follow a guinea hen in soggy, dew covered grass and they don't make it. The guinea hens seem to range a little more than chickens, and the ones I have dealt with seemed to be a little less attentive than chickens.


Oh, the grass is wet enough here in the mornings. I think the crucial detail is that we kept the hen and keets cooped up the first few weeks so the the keets could grow enough to keep up with the hen. We didn't let them range until the keets were a month old. I'm confident that she would have lost many of them if we had not done that. 

This hen does seem to be fairly attentive for a guinea, not much worse than the average chicken hen. What's really surprised me is that her mate travels with the keets as well. Several times I've seen kittens stalking the keets until the male drives them off. He wasn't cooped up with them, but he would come to the door of the coop several times a day to check on them. When we finally left the door open for them to come out, he was there almost as soon as they came out.


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