I realized this morning that I have only imagined posting about the guineas that we’ve had since the beginning of July. This just goes to show that not all the blog posts that start in my head end up online.

I posted a picture of the guineas over the weekend on my photo blog and my mom commented, “When did you get these??” My first thought was, “Mama! I thought you read my blog…” Then I went back through both the photo and regular blogs and couldn’t find anything about guineas. Ha!

Here’s the tale of the guineas… Linda (our fabulous neighbor) got a batch of guineas in late June and we bought some from her. I think we brought our six down to the house on July 1st or 2nd. We lost one when we moved them outside to what used to be the ducks’ pen, because we didn’t get the ducks’ water tub out at first. Sad. But the other five are doing great. We now let them run around in the fenced garden all day, eating bugs. Come evening, they fly out of the garden and run around the yard until we herd them into their pen. Hopefully soon they’ll fly out of the garden and into their pen in the evening on their own.

And here they are, in case you missed them on Yesterday:

Let’s cover the bad first, so we can end on a good note, shall we?

We lost 5 chickens, including four laying hens, in one week to an unknown predator. Two of the losses happened while we were gone at camp. The other three took place all in one day last week. Sick. Disgusting. Frustrating. Infuriating. Expensive.

We have four laying hens left, along with a young hen, a young rooster, and our Big Rooster. So we’re down from 5-8 eggs each day to 2-4 eggs each day. Hopefully the young hen will start laying soon.

For now, we are keeping the chickens (along with their buddies, the ducks) in their coop/pen unless we have someone outside to watch them. Fowlherd is the newest title around our place.

The ducks are doing well. We definitely have a mallard drake, and it is fascinating to watch him develop his colors. In a couple of recent pictures of the ducks, you can see that how much he changed in just one week.

Since we lost the third duck up at the pond, they won’t go up there, and they have become yard ducks. But they love playing in this tub of water. This shot was taken on August 2nd.

And here’s the drake a couple of days ago on August 9th. Jonathan got a great shot that captures the color change in progress on his head. Looks a little rough right now, but he will be gorgeous soon, I think. His tail feathers are also starting to curl up, another drake trait.

The guineas are doing well. We let them out of their pen as often as we can, and they love walking (and occasionally flying) around the yard looking for goodies. Our garden is fenced, and I’m thinking about letting them run around in there, since that’s the biggest reason we got them. We’re just a bit uncertain of getting them out and in, so we’ll see. They have much more of a herd mentality than the chickens; they are rarely farther apart than in this picture: