Fourteen Keets

Thursday 6th September 2012
This morning I flushed a Snipe from the dyke.
A good start to the day.

Yesterday morning a weasel bounced across my path as I walked back from letting the chickens out. This was a most welcome sight as we've not seen one for quite a few months, not since Gerry caught one. But it was also slightly worrying news for the keets. Although the guineas defend their young robustly, they can't keep an eye on all of them all the time and the weasel is a pretty nippy little fellow.


When I returned yesterday, Sue told me she could only count fourteen keets. Whether this was down to the weasel or not, I don't know. I suspect not. It was only the other day that one became separated from the rest of its family and would surely have perished had I not heard it in the long grass of the orchard and reunited it.
















If it was indeed the weasel which took one of the keets I reckon it will return, so I've made the decision that if numbers go down much further we will be back to indoor rearing for a while.
As it is, fourteen is still a very good sized family to have survived this long.

They now spend much of their time in the chicken pen. They have joined the trribe of lder chickens, but the younger chickens are still driven off with vigour. In the evening the keets go through the fence to their separate house and Lady Guinea hops over to join them. G'nea G'nea roosts on the fence as lookout.

Meanwhile, I have put ten eggs under Elvis, which she has now been on for three days. Let's hope she gets to be a mother this time and that she has ten hens.