I hadn’t written many details about the loss of all our chickens other than to say it was really upsetting.  There wasn’t anyone to blame or any purpose in finger pointing.  The dog was outside on the run like he was is normally, the chickens were in the coop and nothing was out of the ordinary.  Louie, the dog, slipped out of his collar and then managed to dig under the chicken wire of the coop and that was the end of it.  It was upsetting since we had raised these chickens from chicks, especially loosing the big rooster Convict.  I still miss him crowing in the mornings when I left for work.

Fortunately this past week we saw an ad on Craigslist from someone looking for a good home for a few ducks, a chicken and some guinea hens. The person lived close by and it was to good a deal to pass up.  We loaded the kids in the Durango and headed over.

An hour later we came home with a small hen, two male ducks, one female duck and four guinea hens.  The guineas are…interesting looking.  They arent going to win any beuty pageants, but they were cool to look at.  It was ironic that less than a week ago I was posting a comment at Kendra’s blog asking about guineas

We spent the rest of Saturday rebuilding the chicken coop in a new part of the yard and getting the birds settled in.  We were looking forward to building a new, larger permanent space for them on Sunday.

When we picked the birds up, the owner told us that the guineas were escape artists and that she had once spent a couple of hours catching them when they got away from her.  Sunday morning we learned this ourselves first-hand.  When we woke up the birds had gotten out via a section of wire that had not been stapled properly.  We were able to get the chicken and ducks back without problems, but the guineas were nowhere to be found.

All the kids joined in the search, walking the woods, especially near the creek, looking up on the trees, under the sheds, even if in the garage with no luck.  We concentrated our search in one are of the woods were it seemed like we kept hearing strange bird calls.  After a few hours our 13 year old, who felt especially guilty since he had stapled the section of wire that had served as the escape route, suggested we bring DJ the yellow Lab to help.  I figured it could not hurt.  After about five minutes of walking around in the woods, DJ ran straight for a patch of leaves and started smelling around.  We checked, and there were two guinea feathers.  We looked up, and there they were, all four of them sitting under a tree, just hanging out.  Now the fun began.

If you have ever tried to catch a chicken, imagine that times 10 and that is how hard it is to catch guineas.  They are fast, agile little hens.  It finally took all 5 kids, Heather and me almost an hour to corner them in the shed to catch them.  It was amazing to watch them run so fast, turn so sharply, yet always stay in a group.  No matter how many times we seperated them, they always managed to end up back in a cluster.

Now all the birds are safely back in the coop, which has been re-enforced more way than you can imagine.  We will be adding to the coop to give the birds more area to roam and add a small water formation for the ducks to swim in.