Come Back, Martha!: A Tale of Our Guinea Fowl

When we last left Hank, Jr. and Edna they had raised six keets (baby guineas) nearly to adulthood. You remember Hank, Jr. and Edna don't you? They were our bug-eating pair of guineas who overcame great difficulty to raise a little family in our suburban acreage.

Lonely No Longer: A Story of Our Guinea Fowl

I believe this story stands on its own, however if you would like the background of the stories of our guineas, click here: #1--It's a Bird, It's a Pain; #2--Parenting Problems; #3--All Good Things.

A lonely Edna patrols the lawn.

It was sad, really. Watching our guinea, Edna roam through our yard by herself just didn't seem right. Her entire life had been spent in the company of Hank, her companion and mate. Hank had met an unfortunate end in an encounter with a pickup on the road. Now she roamed the yard, searching as always for insects, but stopping now and then for a futile call to Hank. "Sorry, Edna, he's not coming back," I would tell her.

We wondered what to do. Was she going to be okay? Would she leave in search of another guinea or just keel over with grief? We wished we had not sold her offspring. After a week of contemplating we decided to get another adult guinea. We contacted the person who had purchased young guineas from us in the past. She told us to come by her farm about dark. She explained that many of her guineas roosted in the rafters of the barn where she milked her goats. After the guineas were settled for the night, we could turn off the lights, climb a ladder, shine a flashlight on the guinea we wanted and then grab it. And that's just what happened. Mike picked a pearl with a few stray white feathers from what appeared to be a row of young bachelors (he didn't want to split up any couples) and we had a young cockerel. The conversation about what to name him was brief. "His name is Hank, Jr.," said Mike, quite firmly. Well, okay.

Hank, Jr. and Edna had an uneasy first meeting.

Introductions took place soon after. We put Hank, Jr. in the chicken pen so he couldn't try to return to his former home. The chicken pen is about 7 feet tall and is covered except for a small opening in the roof. It contains the chickens very well. I guess we imagined that Edna and Hank, Jr. would get acquainted through the fence. While gardening the next morning, I heard a great guinea commotion coming from the vegetable garden. Hank, Jr. had somehow exited the chicken pen and a meeting was in progress. Like two people marooned on a desert island, they seemed to understand that they shared a common destiny. Perhaps it was not their first choice, or their second choice; but wait. They were each other's only choice.  

Through the next few days we saw the guineas around the yard. Sometimes they were together, often they were not. It appeared that Hank, Jr. was going to stick around. One evening we noticed that Edna had not returned to roost in the cedar tree above the chicken pen. It kind of bothered me to think that she might be off somewhere else roosting with Hank, Jr. in another tree. But that wasn't the case at all. Edna was setting on a nest! She had picked a place in the daylilies next to the vegetable garden. It had not even occurred to us that Edna had been laying eggs for several weeks. A little bit of the original Hank still remained among the twenty or so eggs in the nest. 

Only if you know where to look can you find Edna's nest in the daylilies.

During the four weeks that Edna sat on the nest, we occasionally saw Hank, Jr. We saw him often enough to know that he was still around, but who knew where he spent his days or for the matter, where he roosted at night. The gardens suffered from the lack of "bug patrols." And then, one marvelous day, success! Once again, Edna was able to hatch a clutch of keets.

Edna seemed enormously pleased with her babies.

Now what should we do? We had heard that guineas are not very good parents. One experienced guinea farmer says on her web site that in all the years she had raised guineas, she had "yet to have a guinea hatch a clutch of keets and bring any keets home alive on her own."  Wet grass (which can chill and kill the keets), wildlife, neighborhood cats and an guinea parent that moves at a fairly fast pace all makes life precarious for tiny, vulnerable keets. They would be safer in a box in the garage. 

Does this scare you? It scares me. Don't get too close to Edna's babies!

You could tell that Edna was thrilled to be a mother. She led them around the vegetable garden with pride. The vegetable garden seemed like it was a good place for them. The asparagus patch with its tall plants and shady hiding spots seemed ideal. If she would just keep them in the vegetable garden, maybe they would be alright. Then in swooped Hank, Jr. He wasn't riding a white horse, but perhaps he saved the day. Did he know that these keets were not his biological offspring? If he knew, he didn't care. He certainly took a vital interest in this little family. He sprang into action. A gentle chirp or cluck brought the chicks to him. Evidently he thought we were too close and he began to lead the chicks and Edna out of the garden, towards the neighbor's yard. I ran around to head them off and they returned to the garden.  We backed off. There was no more discussion about taking the keets to raise them ourselves.

Always together--the family wanders through the yard in search of insects.

The little family seemed inseparable. They did not stay in the vegetable garden very long, but wandered throughout our yard and neighbors' yards.  If you saw Hank, Jr., Edna and the little ones were not far behind.  The only time I would see Hank, Jr. without his family was in the early evening when Edna evidently tucked her youngsters in quite early and Hank would wander around for awhile before heading for his own roost.

I'm feeling just a little snubbed--Hank, Jr. and Edna lead the keets away.

A few days after the keets hatched it began to rain. It was a fairly warm day and the rain was gentle. When you raise keets you keep the temperature at 90-95 degrees with heat lamps for its first two weeks. No way would they be that warm in the rain. And yes, Edna was leading them around in the rain, but she would stop occasionally and the keets would crawl underneath her and warm up. All the keets survived that day.

The guineas know every square inch of our property. 

Hank, Jr., especially, did not allow the keets to get close to humans. Should we happen to meet, he would whirl around and head in the opposite direction, chirping and clucking his directions. He did not make it easy to get many good photographs of the family. But he was an excellent father and Edna was doing great as a mom, too. Mike watched from the barn on day while Hank, Jr. and Edna caught insects and brought them to the youngsters. Soon they would be catching their own meals and learning to fly. Looking out across the lawn you could see little birds popping up a few inches above the grass. Soon they were flying to the top of railroad ties, the middle rung of the fence, the picnic table and finally the top rung of the fence. Surely they are now roosting above the ground by now.

They can fly! Often the little guineas line up in a row.

They're growing up! The little guineas show up for grain and let me take a photo.

After about a month, I think we would consider the keets adolescents. They are fully feathered now. They move extremely fast. They come running along with their parents when Mike feeds them grain in the evening and eat enthusiastically. The family is always together, but I've noticed that now they spread a little further apart. Looking at the guinea family, I wish all children could be raised this way under the watchful eye and constant presence of both parents who teach them to get their meals and then to fly. 

Thinking about the two Hanks reminds me of the two Susannas in our family's history. The first Susanna was married to Heinrich Benjamin Becker and the mother of four young sons when the family immigrated to the United States as part of the Mennonite immigration in the fall of 1874. Shortly before boarding the ship, she gave birth to a daughter. After a grueling voyage which included engine trouble, a near shipwreck and an outbreak of smallpox, they arrived in the United States and finally in South Dakota in the spring. Before them stretched a wide open prairie of green grasses. There were no towns or roads; no fences or plowed ground. Here they would start their new life from scratch. But Susanna died in September. She was 28 years old. Shortly afterwards the baby girl died, too. 

Those were difficult days when families needed each other with a fierceness we don't understand. A few months later Benjamin  remarried. Her name was also Susanna. She was perhaps 16 or 17 years old and an orphan. Let me hasten to add that I believe that 17 was much more mature in those days than in our current time of prolonged adolescence. Still, it is very young for so heavy a responsibilty. Benjamin was 31 years old and of course there were the four little boys. Almost 140 years afterwards it is not possible to know the heart and soul and emotions of people who are basically names in genealogical record to me. It's hard to believe that this was either one's first choice. Perhaps they were each other's only choice. Still they seemed to have made a good life for themselves. Eleven children were born to them (one died in infancy) and a farm was established. Toward the end of his life my great-grandfather, Jacob Becker, the oldest of the those little boys, looked back on the arrival of his stepmother and said, "With God's help things went better again." 

Here's a salute to all the Hank, Jr.'s and Susannas out there who make the best of only choices and care for youngster that don't share your DNA. Thank you. I'm sure you've found that with God's help things do go better. The difference you make may impact generations.

 

All Good Things. . .

Guineas are better than any insecticide.

Early morning is the best time to be in the garden. I often step out of the house before 7 with my camera just to check out the garden. Its pleasant, much cooler and the light is not so intense. Even at this early hour, I was not the first to visit the garden. Hank and Edna our resident guinea fowl were already on the job. Walking slowly, heads bobbing, they were searching for insects. You go, guineas! 

Edna sets on eggs under the mulberry tree. Don't mess with her.

This summer, Edna, our female guinea, successfully hatched a nest full of eggs after many unsuccessful tries. She located her nest under the mulberry tree not far from the vegetable garden. It seemed like an ideal location. To offer her a measure of protection (she sat of the nest all night when who knows what might be prowling around) we thought we might fence in the area around the nest. Guineas can easily fly over a fence, but predators would stay out. That was the idea anyway. Mike placed a fence around three sides with the idea of giving her time to adjust. She did not. She paced the sides of the fence unable to figure out how to go in the open side. Flying over didn't seem to occur to her either. The fence was removed and she was on her own.

Well, not completely on her own. During the day, Hank, the male guinea didn't get very far away. He would listlessly look for insects and then sit and soberly wait a few feet from the nest. "I guess this waiting for babies thing is hard on the guys, too," I remarked to Mike one day. "Yes, it is," he said, his voice heavy with experience.

If you look closely, you can see the first hatched keet.

Day after day she sat on those eggs, coming off the nest just briefly to eat a bit or get a drink. As the days progressed she left the eggs less and less. Four weeks is a long time and a lot could go wrong, but this time, nothing did. And finally, success!!  There was much jubilation among both humans and guineas.

A proud mama and her scurrying keets.Baby guineas are called keets.

 All was not well, though. We had been told that guineas are not very good parents. That seems rather harsh, I know, but the truth is that a suburban yard and eleven tiny keets who cannot keep up with their parents wandering is not an ideal combination. Especially if you factor in neighborhood cats. Mike has raised many chicks and several keets in our garage. He knows how to take care of them. We knew they would be safer there. "Let her keep a few," I protested. He left her two. By the end of the day, there was only one. 

The next morning we were disappointed  to see Hank and Edna out on their morning scavenging without any trailing keet. Then several hours later, I saw them again and this time, the keet was with them. They were near the chicken pen and the tiny keet walked through the fence and tumbled down a few inches into chicken pen. Chickens ignored her and I rescued her, returning her to her parents. When I told Mike, he said, "I think I need to get that keet, too." 

"You let that mama keep her baby!," I hollered from the house as Mike walked across the yard. But what he found was the tiny keet sitting by itself in the middle of grass between the chicken pen and the garden. Hank and Edna were nowhere to be found. Even I couldn't argue with him then. That keet joined her siblings in the garage.

The keets are an interesting genetic combination. The top half have the pearl feathers like their father, but on their breasts, they have white feathers like their mother. The keets have been sold and have a new home.

"What shall we do next, Hank?"

 Hank and Edna didn't seem to miss a beat. They resumed their happy wandering, looking for bugs in the garden, stopping by the glass doors to admire their reflection and never getting very far apart from each other. Each night they roosted in the cedar tree over the chicken pen. 

Wednesday morning I was out early, before 7, and there they were, already on the job. After a pass through the garden, they headed towards the front of the house and I headed inside. "Have you seen Hank?," asked Mike, minutes later. "Edna keeps calling for him and he doesn't answer."  Yes, she certainly was. Her two syllable screech was repeated over and over. There was no responding one syllable call. Over and over, throughout the day she continued to call. Hank, it seemed, had disappeared. Looking around, we could find no evidence of what might have happened, not even a stray feather. 

I'm sure you've guessed that there is no happy ending to this story. It took a few days, but eventually we learned what we already knew. Hank was dead. He had evidently been hit by a car on the road near our house and was thrown under a evergreen tree. I had never seen them on the road before, but I guess it only takes once. 

Edna continues her lonely patrol. She still stops once in a while to call, but not so often as before. Oh, look, there's a bug! She scurries after it. 

Hank, our guinea 2010-2012

More blogs about our guineas:
It's a Bird, It's a Pain
Parenting Problems
Lonely No Longer



 

Parenting Problems

Nestled under some brush, a determined Edna sits on her eggs.

The desire to reproduce runs strong in most animals. Hank and Edna, our resident guinea fowl are no different. Each day during the spring and summer Edna takes time out of her busy day of eating bugs and seeds to lay an egg. It is a light tan color and slightly smaller than a chicken egg. She returns to the same place day after day. The place is of her choosing, not ours and it’s her secret. She looks for an out-of-the-way spot, because she wants to sit on those eggs and hatch them.  Eventually she will have a clutch of fifteen to twenty-five eggs. It will take around four weeks for the eggs to hatch once she is sitting on the nest if all goes well. But for Edna it has never gone well.

A guinea fowl sitting on a nest day after day and night after night is vulnerable. While the male will stay close during the day offering an element of protection, a loud warning if nothing else, when the day becomes dusk, he heads for the roost up in the pine tree. It is a noisy parting. It almost seems that Hank doesn’t want to leave Edna on her nest on the ground, but his instinct to roost in the trees is as strong as hers are to sit on the nest. In the house, her humans are also turning out the lights and crawling into bed leaving her with no real protection from the unknown nightlife in our neighborhood. We can hear coyotes howls on some nights and we know there are raccoons and possums in the area, but we can only guess what is prowling around in the dark of the night.

Edna’s first nest was in the middle of a poison ivy patch in our neighbor’s yard. She was almost impossible to see as she sat immovable among the green vines. We kept a respectful distance, but a predator had no such inhibitions. One night he moved in. Edna was able to escape but the predator destroyed and ate the eggs.  This did not discourage our guinea pair. It only meant that she would locate a new place for her next batch. We make it our business to try to discover just where the next nest is in hopes that we can somehow prevent another disaster or at least save some of the eggs. 

The Bantam hen was a gentle mother to the little guineas.

A nest right next to the neighbor’s shed, but very near our barn, didn’t seem like the best location. Since she left the nest at least once a day, Mike decided to remove a few of the eggs when she was away. There was a bantam hen in the chicken pen that was showing signs that she would like to set on eggs. Since there is no rooster in the chicken pen, it would be an exercise in futility to set on chicken eggs, but she was more than happy to set on the guinea eggs. She settled in on a nest that was placed in a pen in the barn and sat. And sat. Chicken eggs hatch in three weeks, while guinea eggs will take another week. We wondered if she would give up after three weeks. She was persistent and four keets were hatched. She was a dedicated mother, guiding, nudging and teaching her active hatchlings. The fuzzy keets had orange legs and had interesting combination of their parents coloring. At first it appeared that were just like their  Pearl father with spotted gray and black feathers. But no, they also have white feathers on the lower part of their bodies. After a few months, the young guineas were sold to a farmer.

Waiting on a woman

Edna's clutch of eggs in the day lilies

Last summer Edna found a spot to nest right in the middle of the daylilies that border the vegetable garden. As far as locations go, this one wasn’t too bad. Almost completely hidden in the tall green leaves, it seemed quiet and remote. Hank often waited on the fence while Edna laid her daily egg. Still, we knew that odds were not in her favor and after consulting with a knowledgeable poultry expert, we decided to attempt to move her and her eggs to a safer place inside a fence. The recommendation was pretty specific. Sometime when she was off the nest we were suppose to move the eggs and nesting materials into a container. Mike chose a large plastic tub and made the change. Edna settled right back on her nest without a problem. The next step was a little more difficult. In the dark of the night a blanket should be thrown over her and the nest and mama could be relocated. Alas, things do not always go as planned. Especially when the all-important blanket, so vital in any abduction, was neglected. From the house I heard the unmistakable squawk of an unhappy guinea. Then came the report that during the move she had flown away. Once off the nest, she did not return. To make the best of a bad situation, Mike recruited a red hen from the chicken pen. She too, was eager to set on some eggs. And that's just what she did. During the worst of the brutally hot summer, she sat until four little keets were hatched. 

The red hen was a ferocious mother (which makes photography difficult).

The young guineas now share a pen with several young chickens.

The red hen was a ferocious mother. Come too close and she'd peck you. It was hard to even see the keets because when anyone was close to the pen, she would call her babies to the furthest corner. After a few weeks, the young guineas could take care of themselves and so Mike decided to move the hen back with the other chickens in the conjoining pen. But both the hen and the youngsters made such a racket, that Mike, tough guy though he is, returned the red hen to her charges. 

Can you see Edna under the cedar branches?

Tonight, Edna is again on a nest. This time it is under the one of the cedar trees bordering our property. Autumn is here. The weather is getting colder. This cannot possibly have a happy ending. I have a little talk with Edna. "Edna," I say, "Let it go." She is not listening.




 


Want to read more about Hank and Edna? Click here.
Or here. Or here.

It's a Bird! It's a Pain! It's Super Guinea!

“The only thing more stupid than guineas are people who try to raise them!,” muttered my husband, Mike. We were tromping through a wooded shelter belt, dodging scratchy branches and wading through long-fallen leaves searching for our scattered flock of guinea fowl. It appeared that eight weeks of pampering and nurturing was leaving and had no intention of coming back! Fortunately an agile neighbor girl helped us to corral the birds and herd them back to an enclosed pen.

Guinea fowl are interesting birds. Originally from Africa, they have been domesticated, but have not totally lost their wildness.