Yesterday morning all three guinea eggs (of the first batch of eggs) pipped.  So I kept checking all day, watching one of the eggs progress, but the other two didn’t.  I could hear the keets peeping and the eggs would rock, but they didn’t hatch out.  So by evening I helped all three eggs hatch.

I believe the humidity was not high enough in the incubator, and this can cause them to pip but not hatch out all the way.  When they first emerge from the shell they are wet.  You’re supposed to leave them in the incubator until they dry, but I put them in their brooder to dry instead.

They bobble around, or lay and sleep,  and dry off over time.  The last chick to hatch had some “goop” stuck on it’s posterior that was also stuck to the shell, so I was a bit concerned that one might have trouble.  This morning all three were up and peeping, eating and drinking.

There is one dark keet, and two light keets.  I don’t know the official colors, but the light ones will be the same color as the hen.  The dark one we’ll have to wait and see as it grows what color it will be as an adult.

Their food is a chick starter pellet that I ground up in a coffee grinder.  When they are bigger they can eat the whole pellets, but for now, it is much easier for them to eat the powder, and it ensures they eat more.  Their water is also a very shallow frosting can lid for now, enough for them to learn to drink, but not deep enough for them to drown in it.  In a few days I’ll switch them to a regular chick waterer.

After all the keet losses this year, I’ll be raising these myself.  They’ll stay in their brooder in the house for several weeks before moving to a larger brooder in the barn.  I hope at least one of them is a hen!