Unity Farm Journal - First week of July 2014

While I’m in Japan, Kathy has her hands full at Unity Farm.   I did my best to prepare the farm for my 5 days away including building bee hive supplies, ensuring the health of all the animals, and completing all the monthly maintenance tasks.As I’ve posted before, Guinea fowl are horrible parents.  They lay eggs in a communal pile then assign a designated layer to incubate them.  When the eggs hatch the young have to find their way to the coop, often through tall wet grass and through predator laden terrain.   Most don’t make it.   This year, we’re helping them a bit.The ducks hatched 4 guineas and kept the babies (keets) warm and safe in a brooder for 2 weeks before moving them into the coop.   It’s likely the adults would attack them if they ran free in the barnyard, so we had to build a protected enclosure - a coop within a coop.  I call it the mini-cooper (sounds like a catchy name).   Here’s a photo of the keets enjoying their new coop space, safe from the adults.The ducks have been sitting on another 17 eggs and we moved them from the duck house to the incubator before I left to prevent Kathy’s having to keep newly hatched birds from drowning in the duck pond (Guineas can’t swim).At the moment, we have two large nests on the farm - one to the north near the hoop house with about 40 eggs and another to the south with about 30 eggs.   Two designed female guineas keep the eggs warm all night and thus far have not...
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