They’re Growing Up Fast, Maybe too Fast

Guinea Fowl at 6 Weeks

True to their adolescence, the guineas are going through a bit of an awkward period. With their half-naked heads and scraggly neck ruffles, they remind me of Skeksis, the creepy villains of Jim Henson’s movie The Dark Crystal. Interspersed with their mangey brown-gray transitional plumage, however, are patches of beautiful black-and-white spotted mature feathers, promises of impending adulthood and tick conquest!

Sadly, their rampant adolescent growth has just proven the demise of one of our little guys.  I found him this morning – cold and lifeless – his head hopelessly lodged in one of the feed holes of their food trough.  Making the matter more pitiful was the fact that I could find no non-gruesome way to extract him, and had to lay him to rest with the lid of the feeder still attached.  I can’t figure how his head could have even gotten all the way through the hole in the first place, unless it grew while he was in there filling his beak.

To ensure that nobody else from the flock beholds such an awful fate, the Louises have been upgraded to a hanging hopper-type feeder with an open ring around the bottom – no more feed holes.

RIP, Louis II.