Getting Caught Red-Handed

So I got caught red-handed.  Let me explain...

A while back we thought it would be a good idea to get some guinea fowl to raise with the chickens.  I always heard that they were great 'watch-dogs' against snakes. I had good childhood experiences with their eggs and just thought it would be interesting to have a new creature on the homestead.  So I got 4 baby guinea fowl chicks - straight run.  Three were males and one was female.  Although she eventually laid eggs.  She hid her nests very well and by the time we found her eggs, they were old and we were afraid to eat them.  Oh and another thing - guineas are very VERY LOUD!

After a bit, one of the guinea roosters got into a fight with another and was mortally wounded.  Then the female got killed by a predator.  That left us with two males. With no female guinea to show their affections to, they began to terrorize the hens. They were the bullies of the barnyard and gave the hens no peace.

On December 1, 2016 our hens laid their last egg, and they didn't start laying again until mid-February.  Although egg production often wanes in winter months, we had never experienced a complete stoppage of eggs like this.  I first thought that it had to do something with nutrition, so we changed their feed.  Then we thought that perhaps they had parasites.  Nothing we tried seemed to help.

Many times I lovingly refer to my wife as "theory woman."  She is very analytical and has a theory or hypothesis for everything.  She told me that she thought that the persistent bullying by the guineas had contributed to nervous hens and lack of egg production.   I could fix that problem, I told her.  I caught the guineas, killed them, scalded them, plucked them and cut them up.

Although I guess I'll miss their personalities, if they were contributing to the 'egg-drought,' we'll get rid of them.  And that's what we did.

When we butcher fowl, I always like to clean the gizzards as you can see what they've been eating or using to help digest their food.  In the 5 o'clock position in the photo below, you'll see a round, ball-like object.  It is aglow-in-the-dark Air-Soft bullet.  That is kind of odd, but I'm sure the kids shot the air soft bullet into the pasture and the guinea rooster devoured it.

So to test our theory, we were interested to see if egg output increased.  Did it?  The day after the guinea slaughter, a hen laid an egg, the next day another egg, then three, then four, then six eggs, ten eggs and thirteen eggs.  Although correlation doesn't imply causation, it is mighty curious the timing of the increase in egg-laying in conjunction with the guineas' demise  Several factors may by in play, but I don't think it is coincidental.  In another good turn of events, we are enjoying a fresh guinea gumbo right now!