There's not much happening in the bunny barn right now. The 2 litters are almost 3 wks old now and I've been attempting to sex them. Still pretty small for that, but there might be broken does. Several litters are due around the 2nd week of the month.
So I'll talk about guineas. I've been watching closely and the hen finally laid on Thursday - 4.29. There are 18 eggs and they are in the incubator. The adventure begins.
There's an acre and a half for her to hide in, so what do I look for? They always stick together. Members of the flock are rarely out of sight of each other. When I noticed I could only see one of them, I paid attention to him. She won't be far away. Then I listen for her call. The hen is very good at hiding. Even when it's found, it's hard to see her on the nest. She eventually calls out and then I can pinpoint her location.
I was very lucky she nested where I could get to them. With all the prickly brambles around here, that could have been a problem. She was in a little "cave" of tall grass under a honeysuckle on the outside corner of the fence.
When she got off the nest and was out of sight, I collected the eggs. At first I left her 2 in case she wanted to lay more, but she didn't return to the nest. I guess she knew it had been disturbed. I collected those eggs as well.
Of course, I knew I should have had the incubator set up and ready to go, but I procrastinated. Turns out that was ok. I researched and learned it's best to let the eggs "settle" for most of a day before starting incubation. Settling lets the contents of the eggs stablize and brings them to room temperature before exposing them to the much warmer incubator. These were so freshly laid, they were quite cold. While the eggs settled, I set up and regulated the incubator.
That was tricky. It's real sensitive. One of the things I couldn't get right was the humidity. There's several small holes and one larger one in the top. I covered them with tape and the humidity immediately came up. Then it was too hot. So I uncovered some of the small holes and that seemed to do the trick. Still can't get humidity above 50% so I hope that's enough. The incubator is a styrofoam model with a circulating fan. This may have something to do with why the humidity won't go any higher.
It also came with an automatic egg turner but I couldn't get it to work. Don't know what was going on there. I bought the unit used and had to print a manual from the website. The diagrams don't match what I have. I suspect I didn't have it installed correctly but couldn't see any other way. I ended up removing it and will just turn the rack by hand.
In the meantime, I had put in an order for some keets. I found a breeder within reasonable driving distance in NC. He has pearls and pied pearls. Cool! A different color will be nice. I ordered 8 pieds and he says they should be ready to go within a month or so. He has a lot of orders to fill before mine.
As annoying as that many guineas can be, I really really need them! I'm already finding ticks on the dogs and me. Yuck. 2 adults aren't enough to control them. I saw hardly any ticks last year when I had more birds! I did find a good way to dispose of any ticks that make it into the house on my clothes. I drop them in the fish tank. The cichlids love em!
In other news.
Haven't been able to get a good snap of the horses. They're shy and won't come close to me. They are being very well taken care of. The owners are out here at least once a day and spend time with them back by the barn. I can't see the barn very well from here so don't know what they do.
Oh I almost forgot! I finally have highspeed internet! Don't know why I didn't know this but I just found out I can get mobile broadband from my cell phone company. It seemed to me I should have been able to get wireless internet, but I guess I asked the wrong questions. A friend turned me onto the facts. I ran to the cell store and got the stuff. I'm lovin it! So many things I can do now that I couldn't before. I can even watch videos. So far I'm not a big video surfer because it still takes time to load one, but if it's less than 5 mins long, I'll go for it. But photos and heavily-coded websites...I can do that! It only took a few seconds to update my anti-virus where before it took too long and bogged down the internet while doing it. Not only that, I don't get disconnected all the time. My dialup ISP had a policy of disconnecting after 3 hrs (the Fair Use Policy), and it often dumped during inactivity...like composing a long post like this. I have finally joined the real world.
It was my plan to drop the land line phone and dialup bills. Together they are about the same as the broadband plan. When I talked to the phone company, he was so eager to keep my business, he came up with a new plan to save me money. What a racket! All this time (or at least since I've had a cell phone) I was paying for stuff I didn't have to. I don't make long distance calls, I use cell minutes, so didn't need that part of the bill. A couple other things and he cut my bill in half or more. I said ok, I'll try it your way. If it's still too high, I'll disconnect permanently.
Well, that was quite a ramble about things that have nothing to do with the rabbits. Oh well. I do go on sometimes.
tnt
