Where Did Our Keets Go?
October 14th, 2013 · No Comments · Posted in farming
All of our young Guinea fowl have disappeared.
We raised 15 from chicks. The keets spent eight weeks in our basement brooder, an additional two weeks in the coop I built for them on pasture. We had a hard time convincing them to leave the coop. Once they did leave, we couldn’t get them back inside. They preferred to live in the bushes along a hedgerow, emerging according to their own schedule for food and water. In the morning we’d listen to their raucous squawking. Eventually they ventured out into the fields and we’d watch them skitter across the nearby pastures searching for who knows what.
But one day the flock of 15 was cut in half. The remaining eight or nine keets followed the same routine, scampering into the bushes whenever we got close, coming out to feed, walking the pastures. Had the others been eaten by some predator? Had they simply taken off in search of better stomping grounds? This mystery hung over the farm like a grey cloud, until one day the rest of the keets vanished as well. Poof!
My wife was convinced they’d been eaten. Walking the grounds, we’d find feathers. No blood. No corpses. Just a few feathers here and there, as if there’d been some kind of tussle. Still, it seemed to me highly unlikely that a fox or coyote could have made off with so many large birds–bigger than your average chickens–in one or even two fell swoops. Or, had a predator attack scared the birds away?
We told the story to our friend Gini, an experienced farm hand. “There’s no mystery,” she intoned, and she made a tiny donut shape with thumb and forefinger, indicating the pea-sized brain of the Guinea fowl. “They don’t stick around.”
My wife insinuated I had not been careful enough to train the keets. We should have spent more time with them when they were chicks, domesticating them.We should have been more attentive teaching them to take shelter in the coop at night.
I had expected them to act a little more like our chickens, who could hardly be more well behaved. Boy, was I wrong about that.
Still, there was one keet that for reasons only it could know had not left with the others. In fact, this one seemed determined to make a home with us. I kept the feeder filled with grain, refreshed the waterer, and it followed the same routine as before–disappearing into the hedge row according to its own schedule, reappearing to feed and walk the grounds. With great relief we’d hear it squawking in the morning, and occasionally look for it pacing around the coop. One day when rain threatened, I moved the feeder inside the coop and, sure enough, the next morning I found the keet inside, helping itself to breakfast. We started to think of this bird as a permanent resident.
Then one day we noticed the keet crossing the front yard, following the chickens. It walked all the way to the other side of the house to the mobile coop where the laying hens were gathered. Standing a short distance away, the keet watched its kindred fowl going about their routine, pecking in the grass, clustering around the feeder, sipping water. My heart warmed. It looked for all the world like the keet might be tired of living alone and wanted to join ranks with our Rhode Island Reds. I had visions of it marching into the coop that night, right in line with the hens.
I don’t know what happened next. I looked away for a moment, and when I next sought out the keet, peering through the living room window, it was gone without a trace. We haven’t seen it since.
We still listen for the squawking sounds. I left the feeder out near the empty coop for days, hoping the keet–any of the keets–might return. But there has been no further sign of them. Sometimes I hear a far off squawk I iamgine could be Guinea fowl. My hopes rise. I keep wondering if they could really make a life for themselves in the surrounding woods. If they’ve become dinner for some predator. If they’ve taken up residence on some other farm. “Maybe they’ll come back,” Gini offered.
We’d like to think so. But somehow, I doubt it.
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