It’s Courting Season in this part of the World!

I hear the raucous calls at night, and the rattle of maracas during the days. What’s going on?

It’s breeding season for the peafowl! Yes, the cool dude is strutting his stuff and showing off for the ladies.  He didn’t wait for Valentine’s Day, but decided last Friday was a good day to start looking for love.

Besides the occasional blood-curdling screech, he also prances and dances and rattles his tailfeathers in his romantic efforts.

In a manner reminiscent of women wondering what’s under a kilt, the peahens are getting a peek at what that dude is hiding behind all those fancy feathers!

So just what IS back there?

Well, there’s those tail feathers that he rattles while he dances, the upright ones right behind the pretty feathers.

He also has some pretty fluffy feathers back there too.

All in all, he’s just a handsome dude no matter which angle you’re viewing.  Now if he can just convince the ladies of that.

And that’s the way it is in my part of the world!

Rowdy Roosters

This past summer we had maybe a dozen or so chicks hatch.  I guess it was a year for the male gender, because what we got were a LOT of roosters.  Too many roosters!

Things look pretty peaceful here as some of the chickens and guineas enjoy breakfast.

Looks can be deceiving, however.  All of a sudden, one rooster decided to enforce the pecking order!

After a short rooster rumble, the red rooster was minus all but one of his tail feathers!

It’s a sad state of affairs to be so low down in the pecking order.

That’s My World Tuesday Premier

That’s my world Tuesday is a new meme to show off your part of the world. This is the first issue and my first time joining in.  I had hoped to get my picture in early on,  but my internet provider was down most of the day.

I’ve looked at some of the pictures from other people’s “corner of the world”, and they are breathtaking!

However, since this is about my world, my picture will be a little more prosaic.  When I look out the windows, I don’t have an ocean view, or see a big sweeping vista showing mountains.  There is no Disney World next door.  Instead we are bordered by a subdivision with close to 50 houses, a creek, farm and blacktop road.

When I look outside I don’t see boats in a river or ocean, or wild animals like moose and bears.  What I see most often are LOTS of guineas.

This bunch is taking it easy in and around the sheep’s shed.

We have other farm animals, of course, but for today, it’s guineas.  There will be time enough on other “My World Tuesdays” to show other animals and scenery from around the farm.

So there we are for today, and welcome to That’s My World!

Guineas Can Be Mean Mothers

Having raised guineas for years, it never ceases to amaze me what a bundle of contradictions they are. They can do some pretty smart things, but most of the time they act like they haven’t got a brain in that little bitty head of theirs.

For instance, every night they fly way up in one of the walnut trees to roost, coming to rest on branches 30-40’ off the ground. Yet, during the day they’ll run along side a 4’ fence, up and down, up and down, and can’t figure out how to get to the other side.

However, while they can’t figure out to fly over a little fence, they’re smart enough to use a concept of team mothering. Most of the time around here, a couple of guineas will have side-by-side nests. When the keets hatch, they both take care of them. In fact, quite often their whole sub-group looks after the babies, with three to seven adults looking after one bunch of keets.

Now they can be very good mothers, but they can also be very mean mothers. On one hand if a hawk passes overhead the keets will hide is the grass while the adult guineas go running off in different directions, trying to draw the hawk’s attention away from the babies.

On the other hand, the adults go zipping along all day, and if those little keet legs can’t keep up, too bad. They just get left behind. Seems kind of mean, cause on the average, only half the keets survive and thrive. Yeah, I know, survival of the fittest and all that, but it still seems mean.

Saturday we were surprised to see that although it’s getting colder, a couple of the guineas had 7 or 8 new keets of the little-bitty-no-bigger-than-a-golf-ball variety following them around. Obviously newly hatched, they could barely keep up with Mama Guinea.

And following the usual pattern, the next morning they were down to 4 keets. Somewhere along the line, the rest just didn’t keep up. Mean mothers.

Then yesterday evening when I went out to do evening chores, I went walking towards the shed only to hear a lot of peep-peep-peeping at my feet. Looking down, I finally located the little keets hiding in the grass. Since I happened to have my camera with me, I thought, “Oh cool! I’ll just get some close-up pictures of these little guys.” Ha! I just thought I was going to get some pictures.

I squatted down close to them and brought my camera up to focus in when all of a sudden….

Something slammed into the top of my bent-over head and knocked me on my butt, leaving a few trails of fire on my forehead and in my hair.

I sat there for a while shaking my head, and finally tumbled to the fact there was Mama Guinea scurrying off with all her little keets. To her way of thinking, I had gotten too close to her babies. She thought she needed to defend her keets from me, and the best way to do that was to slam into me as hard as she could while raking me with those wicked claws of hers.

Dang! Did I mention guineas can be mean mothers? My head still hurts! Guineas may not be very big, but when one slams into the top of your bent-over head, it gets your attention!

You can bet when I went out this morning to do chores I made sure I didn’t get between Mama Guinea and her babies, and all picture taking was done from a distance.

Since I didn’t have sense enough to stay away from those babies last night, I didn’t want Mama Guinea knocking out what little sense might be left in my head this morning!

Cause you know, guineas can be mean mothers.

Orphan Chick

Yesterday morning when I went out to do chores, I noticed Miss “My Pad is a Purple Bucket” was still in the chicken pen.  Well, there’s reason for the saying “up with the chickens.”  They’re usually out foraging at the crack of dawn, and there she was, still in the pen.

Her little chick was huddled down underneath her.

When I got up close, the little chick went running around, but the mother hen never moved. She was dead.

The little peep looked so pitiful trying to keep close to the mother. It would go out every once in a while and eat some cracked corn I threw on the ground, but would go running back to scoot under the mother hen’s body every time another chicken came close.

I’m guessing the hen just died of old age.  We’ve been losing one of the girls from our foundation flock every now and then.  As you can see from her white feathers, she was getting old.  In her prime, her feathers were all that golden color.

The Farmer disposed of the mama hen last night, and I have the chick in a cage on the back porch.  I feel sorry for the little mite.  It keeps peeping for a mama that isn’t going to come back.