Looking in on the chicks last night before bed I noticed that whenever my Polish chicken with special needs would try to eat, one of the white guineas would guard the food and peck him in the face til he gave up and went away.
I have been questioning guineas and chicks living together for a few days now because the guineas are growing at such a rapid rate that they tower over the little chicks (partially my fault since the two in there are bantams so they are even smaller than regular chicks). I’ve only seen positive things in Facebook groups about chickens living with guineas if you start them from babies onward.
But what I noticed was distressing and I called Christine in to watch.
Then we observed that not only was Meatball (the Polish chicken with special needs) being picked on but the other physically abled Polish, Pamplemousse, was being hurt too.
We quickly hatched a plan (see what I did there): the Polish chicks would be removed and put into a cardboard box since we do not currently have extra bins to spare. They would have to deal with not having a brooder light, not a big deal since the ambient temperature is well over 90 degrees in that room right now with the other three lights on. 
Poor Meatball was bleeding from the mean guinea pecking at it’s face. I gave him some cuddle time and checked him over which led to me feeling so bad for this little guy.
He is a bit disfigured with a condition called cross beak which means his beak is misaligned and does not close properly, making it a bit harder for him to eat. He seems to be gaining weight just fine so it’s not harming him, but when I looked it up last night to find out more about this problem I saw that there’s not anything you can do about it other than make sure he doesn’t breed since this is not a trait anyone would desire in their flock.
Not a problem since we don’t plan on breeding, just eating eggs, and we’re really hoping everyone is a girl, but let’s face it, with 14 chicks and only 7 guaranteed female we’ll likely end up with a few dudes.
We do call Meatball a “he” because he does seem like a boy.
Like I said before, we don’t prefer roosters, but this boy (or girl) has a special place in my heart so even if he is a cock-a-doodle-do screamer, I don’t think I could probably give him away. He’s so ugly and cute at the same time.
And he’s really sweet.
When we first got him I would rub his neck and he would instantly stretch it out and then his head would fall over my hand and he would fall into a deep sleep.
We did not notice his deformity at first but a few days with him and I saw it. What could we do? We didn’t want to take him back. It’s definitely gotten worse over the few weeks he’s been in this world but all we can do is pray it stays like it is right now so that he can eat and drink fine. The websites I was looking at last night said he/she can live a normal life but will just never be a good egg layer which we are fine with.
I checked on them in the middle of the night and Meatball was laying on top of Pamplemousse in a very loving way keeping his sister/brother warm (seriously they were warm already, I promise).
Yesterday even before this fourth brooder was added I decided I just cannot add more birds into this chaos. These things, though cute, are a gigantic pain in the butt. We probably check on them about 57 times a day, 56 of which times they need more water and more food or they’ve kicked pine into their water which has soaked up all the water.
The ducks are the biggest pain of all, which I was warned about and passed the warning on to Christine, but she insisted on getting them because the old owner of this farm told her that they were the key in keeping the blackberry bushes bug-free.
And no, they do not eat blackberries in case you were wondering.
Or so Bob (ex farmer here) said. We actually have another order of 15 birds, including 5 guineas, shipping to our house the second week of June. I’ll be canceling that order today. No thanks, I’m done with this bird mom life.
The other order we have is for September. I’ll think about that one and get back to you. For now…I’m good…or actually pretty exhausted and wondering where the goats and milking will fit into this chaos.
Luckily the ducks have amazing personalities other than the “love nibbles” they give that actually hurt like the dickens. They are all just happy and smiley at all times, I’m serious, they smile…and they don’t seem to fight with each other at all.
Everyone is a friend. Everything is great. Food? Yum. Water? The best toy ever. People? Something cool to nibble on! Life is gooooood!
So those stinkers have earned a place in our hearts too.
The tiny chicks are growing quickly and if you watch them closely they all have their own little personalities. We had thought Cindy was the chick who passed away but it turned out that she is indeed alive and well and it was another chick that had passed (okay we didn’t look at the body closely…we just aren’t into staring at dead things).
She is by far the smartest chicken in the batch and she likes to jump onto her little brooder light and rule over the other chicks. She has taught a few of them to jump up there, but not many can jump so high. She is also starting to fly around, which at one week old seems really impressive. She’s so gentle and unafraid that you can put your hand out and she will just stand there and let you pick her up. Rub her neck and she looks up at you with big black chicken eyes of love.
I’m serious, she’s a really cool chick.
Two of the Silkies are TEENY tiny. I’m not sure why (are they girls and the other three Silkies are boys?) and they are pretty skittish, but once caught they are so sweet and cuddly. I’ve been nervous about holding them too much because they are so small and I don’t want to take them away from their heat source, so they’re not getting tons of love right now, but I like to watch them and send them good thoughts.
The Easter Eggers are the fluffiest in the flock and absolutely adorable but they are growing fairly quickly. I’m not sure if they are bantams or if there are big EEs and bantam EEs and we ended up with the big ones. They are much bigger than the Silkies.
Our original plan after talking to a duck breeder was to pick out two ducklings and separate them so that we could spend more time with them and they would be more people oriented than bird oriented. First we thought we would make the Buff duck and the Cayuga duck those lucky two. But then after they got here and I realized our Cayuga was a major biter (oh, “love nibbles!” the duck people say to me…but no, how can that pain be love?) then I thought about other options.
Now that we’ve had them 5 days I think my favorites in terms of personality and noise level (if it were just based on personality it would be the Anconas but they are the loudest by far along with the Cayuga) it would have to be Buffy the Buff Duckling and Heidi the Golden Hybrid 200.
I also like the Welsh Harlequins but I have trouble telling them apart which is why they’re the last to be named.
Actually, I like everyone, Caya the Cayuga is adorable in spite of her biting and she is teensy compared to the other ducklings which makes her even cuter (but does she have small man syndrome and that’s why she’s a biter?? Eek). But in the end we don’t have more waterers or brooder boxes so no one is actually getting separated at this point.
Still, even the teenager was excited about the idea of house ducks (with diapers on, of course) so maybe some day…because apparently ducks made awesome pets.
We are taking bets right now on which ducks are female vs male.
The two Welsh Harlequins were sexed by the hatchery and were sold to us as female as well as the Buff and the Hybrid. The three Anconas and the one Cayuga are all questionable. Almond, the Ancona that is the quietest and biggest of the three, I’m guessing is a male. Male ducks are much quieter than females and they actually do not quack as adults, they only make a little raspy sound. I’m pretending ducklings are the same and the loudest ones are females but supposedly this isn’t really true, so don’t actually listen to this duckling theory.
Gertrude is in between Almond and Sprinkles size-wise, so she may be a boy and she may not be. We will keep her name regardless (I once owned a male guinea pig named Gloria, named by a 3 year old…didn’t really think the name needed changing).
Caya I had originally thought was a boy, I’m not sure why I thought that, because she is the loudest creature, yet teensy, so signs point to female if we’re going by my absolutely fabricated nonsensical theory.
Honestly I’m just hoping for mostly girls because a) we want to sell duck eggs and b) you’re only supposed to have one drake (male duck) to every 4-5 females or they really abuse the females. If we do end up with 2+ drakes we will either separate them outside or we will find them new homes. It’s just the sad truth. We don’t want the girls to be overmated or anything like that.
So root for females!
Tonight we may end up putting the ducklings in the bathtub to swim for the first time (completely supervised). The number one cause of duckling death is drowning, believe it or not.
It’s interesting that when ducklings are hatched under their mama the mama gets her own waterproof oils on them so that they stay afloat. When ducklings are hatched in incubators they do not get this waterproofing and they do not do well in water until they are old enough to produce their own oils which is around 8 weeks or so.