Goats are smarter than Guineas
Yesterday we had to make a trek to Massachusetts to attend a funeral of a friend. I have many thoughts about the funeral and the stuff that goes along with it, but they have to ferment in my mind a little more before I write them down.
Today I'd rather talk about goats and guineas.
Our goats arrived on Friday afternoon. As I mentioned in the previous post, the hotwire wasn't done yet so they went into the chicken run. We set up a tarp over it, and hoped for the best in the coming storm.
Everything was fine when we left on Saturday morning.
We got back late on Saturday night, at least 11PM, probably later. My first priority upon returning was to check on the critters. I rounded up the ducks and put them to bed. I took my Maglite and headed over to the chicken/goat coop. I was only partly surprised to see a complete lack of goats in the chicken pen.
As I approached, I played the light over the scene to get a handle on the situation. The turkeys were sleeping on their perch under the tarp, oblivious to the world. Imagine my surprise when I didn't see any signs of goats escaping. No knocked over fence, no holes, nothing out of order.
I opened the door to the henhouse and saw a relieving sight, two dry goats! They had managed to wiggle through the little chicken door, maybe 12" wide by 20" high. The chickens seemed to have dealt with the idea of having new roommates and made their peace with it.
After I saw that everything was OK, I headed over to the guineas. Now since they are the "wildest" of the birds that live here, One would assume that they would have the most self-preservation instincts. Nope.
There were three of the adults sitting on a perch and the rest had gone into their little gound-house. The problem was that there was 4"-6" of water in their pen from the pouring rain. It was quite a storm!
They were soaked to the gills and lethargic. Death by hypothermia was not far away. It was 48 degrees. I was soaked and my freedom of movement was limited by my drenched clothes, so I took them off and continued to work in my underwear. (how's THAT for a visual...) It really made the job quicker.
I scooped them up and put them in the brooder box for some shelter and covered the whole pen with some aluminum roofing sheet I had salvaged from the dump last week. The birds were really in a stupor, so Buster and I went to the garage to get the brooder lamp to provide some heat.
We managed to get to bed about 4AM. This morning I woke up at 8:45 and went out to check on everyone. The first thing I saw was the flock of adult guineas running around grazing. That was a good sign. A couple of the babies had hopped out of the box and were looking good. Two of them looked pretty lethargic, so back in the box they went with the heat lamp. Unfortunately, one of them was laying dead in the corner. He apparantly hopped out and wandered through the remaining puddle and got chilled.
I'm looking at it this way: sure, we lost one keet, but managed to save nine adults and seven keets who otherwise would not have made it until morning.
As many joke there are about turkeys being too dumb to come in out of the rain, it was the guineas that lacked the common sense not to stand in a puddle. The turkeys were high and dry, but it was the resourcefulness of the goats that went abouve and beyond my expectations.
Today I'd rather talk about goats and guineas.
Our goats arrived on Friday afternoon. As I mentioned in the previous post, the hotwire wasn't done yet so they went into the chicken run. We set up a tarp over it, and hoped for the best in the coming storm.
Everything was fine when we left on Saturday morning.
We got back late on Saturday night, at least 11PM, probably later. My first priority upon returning was to check on the critters. I rounded up the ducks and put them to bed. I took my Maglite and headed over to the chicken/goat coop. I was only partly surprised to see a complete lack of goats in the chicken pen.
As I approached, I played the light over the scene to get a handle on the situation. The turkeys were sleeping on their perch under the tarp, oblivious to the world. Imagine my surprise when I didn't see any signs of goats escaping. No knocked over fence, no holes, nothing out of order.
I opened the door to the henhouse and saw a relieving sight, two dry goats! They had managed to wiggle through the little chicken door, maybe 12" wide by 20" high. The chickens seemed to have dealt with the idea of having new roommates and made their peace with it.
After I saw that everything was OK, I headed over to the guineas. Now since they are the "wildest" of the birds that live here, One would assume that they would have the most self-preservation instincts. Nope.
There were three of the adults sitting on a perch and the rest had gone into their little gound-house. The problem was that there was 4"-6" of water in their pen from the pouring rain. It was quite a storm!
They were soaked to the gills and lethargic. Death by hypothermia was not far away. It was 48 degrees. I was soaked and my freedom of movement was limited by my drenched clothes, so I took them off and continued to work in my underwear. (how's THAT for a visual...) It really made the job quicker.
I scooped them up and put them in the brooder box for some shelter and covered the whole pen with some aluminum roofing sheet I had salvaged from the dump last week. The birds were really in a stupor, so Buster and I went to the garage to get the brooder lamp to provide some heat.
We managed to get to bed about 4AM. This morning I woke up at 8:45 and went out to check on everyone. The first thing I saw was the flock of adult guineas running around grazing. That was a good sign. A couple of the babies had hopped out of the box and were looking good. Two of them looked pretty lethargic, so back in the box they went with the heat lamp. Unfortunately, one of them was laying dead in the corner. He apparantly hopped out and wandered through the remaining puddle and got chilled.
I'm looking at it this way: sure, we lost one keet, but managed to save nine adults and seven keets who otherwise would not have made it until morning.
As many joke there are about turkeys being too dumb to come in out of the rain, it was the guineas that lacked the common sense not to stand in a puddle. The turkeys were high and dry, but it was the resourcefulness of the goats that went abouve and beyond my expectations.
posted by MVTCoPete | 2:51 PM
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