The guineas burst to freedom last Saturday when I decided I’d had enough of them sitting for hours in their house contemplating the open doors but not venturing forth. It was time to kick my fledglings out of the nest. I entered their coop and with a few strict words and a flap of my windmill arms, they exploded out of the coop and flew into the woods.

Damn. Not exactly the effect I was going for. I figured they just hop out of the coop and stick around, but no such luck. So I spent a couple of hours searching the woods for stray birds, which in their panic had bedded down in the leaves and camouflaged themselves well. Once the birds were all out in the field, I watched them with anxious eyes as they flew back and forth from tree to tree across the property. The distressed birds called to each other, upset to be away from the flock but unsure about how to regroup. I had about given up on them when they managed to all fly out of the woods and fields and down from the trees and collect themselves into a nervous-looking bunch.

Around six in the evening on this stress-filled day, I was worrying how I’d get this rangy coalition back into their coop for the night. Just then my neighbor appeared like an angel riding his mountain bike, which proved to be the perfect tool for the job. With some quick cowboy riding on his part, and copious stick waving on mine, we managed to herd the flock back to their coop where they placidly enough jumped right in, seemingly happy to see their home again. I shut up the coop and heaved a huge sigh of relief before heading inside to pick off countless tiny seed ticks—42 bites in all. No, the irony that I got these birds to control the ticks does not, in fact, escape me.

Last Sunday I tried again, and the whole process went much smoother. The birds came out of the coop on their own, and fourteen of them headed to the far side of the property to play in a dust patch along the fence line. The remaining two snuck off by themselves under the cherry tree and spent the afternoon playing birds and bees. I was able to put them all back into the coop myself by herding them along using two long sticks.

Both yesterday and today the birds again were out free ranging, and I had no problem bringing them back to the coop when I wanted to. They are getting quite good at being herded, and as I teach them how to respond to my movements, they teach me. It’s a minute-by-minute learning process as I try to read them and anticipate their moves. When to walk, when to run, when to speak softly to call them along, how to recognize the moment right before they panic and take flight. Each day that I manage to take 16 birds out of the coop and shut the door on 16 birds later in the evening is a good day for me!

I opened the coop door this morning around nine and set the chicken walk in place. I went about my weekend chores, checking back every now and then to see if any guineas had ventured forth to freedom. After several hours and no takers, I fired up the weed whacker and went to work around the property. I’d totally forgotten the coop was open when I went to noisily trim around the garage. The next thing I knew I looked up and a great flurry of grey feathers exploded out of the chicken door and into the field. Whoops. So much for a gentle introduction into free ranging!

When the flurry landed I realized it wasn’t a whole flock, but just one bird. Which walked a bit this way and that before heading into the shade of the cedar tree and grapevine. I watched her for a while and then went back to weed whacking.

The next I saw the guinea she had flown deep in the brush at the wood’s edge. Dumb guinea! A wood full of foxes, and you choose to fly right into their territory. Oh well. I can’t control these birds because they are basically wild, so I just went back to weed whacking the ditch near the road.

When I looked up again, the guinea was near the front of the property under the big silver maple. I took a water break and watched her from the front porch. It was pretty cool to see her strut about the yard, and to poke her head under the cherry and stick her head amongst the azaleas in front of the garage. It gave the farm an air of an exotic wildlife preserve.

The guinea made her way around the edge of the garage and finally realized she was in the vicinity of her tribe. I had thought she would have been drawn back to the coop by the sounds of her flockmates much earlier than she was—it was almost as though she couldn’t find it based on sound alone and needed to actually see the other birds to know where they were.

She spent the next couple of hours making fast circles around the coop while her flock mates anxiously peered down from their balcony seats. Not one made the move to join Magellan as she churned a path through the straw around the chicken walk without figuring out that she need only walk up it to rejoin her family. At one point she burst a few feet into the air in a desperate attempt to hit the chicken door, but upon failing she didn’t attempt that approach again.

I let her go for a few hours figuring she’d eventually get it together. But around five o’clock I had company coming and dinner to cook and wanted the birds to bed for the night. And the guinea had been out in the hot sun for the first time in her life, and I figured she’d had enough excitement for the day. So I stood in the storage area of the coop and opened both the interior and exterior doors that I use to access the coop. In a few minutes Magellan jumped up into the vestibule and greeted her flock. A few minutes more and she jumped back into the coop proper and was home sweet home.

Silly bird—maybe she thinks she’s a person!

The keets turned fifteen weeks old yesterday. The most change in them is visible in their heads, which continue to grow their bony helmets and take on deeper purple and aqua hues.

On Friday the keets will have been in their coop for six weeks, which means—drumroll, please—that they can officially be released to free range and will know to return to the safety of their coop each night. I am not sure how studying every knothole and nailhole inside their coop will help them identify it from outside, at fifty yards and with the local fox hot on their tails, but I am just following all the advice I’ve heard and read.

They definitely show curiosity about an open door, and I think it will be fun to watch them explore a brave new world. I plan on releasing just a few at a time so that hopefully the sounds of their flock mates will keep them near—and returning to—the coop.

I know that there will be inevitable losses, but I am hoping that at least a few survive to do their job, which is to rid this farm of ticks, and mice and garden pests and snakes, and to alert me to to any untoward activity on the property.

The keets turned thirteen weeks old two days ago. A week ago I switched their food from medicated gamebird starter to a combination of nonmedicated chick starter and layer feed—to meet their high protein requirement. They need to be off the medicated food by twelve weeks because, believe it or not, they are actually old enough to be producing eggs! Each day I step into the guinea house I expect to find a new surprise…but nothing yet!

In the past two weeks the keets have developed a beautiful aqua blue over their heads, which have completely lost their baby racing stripes. Their helmets and wattles continue to grow.

In another two weeks they will have been in their coop six weeks, which means I get the green light to open their door and let them out to explore the brave new world. It will not doubt be the start of sadness, as I can’t imagine all of them surviving. But I hope that it will also be the beginning of a new phase of farm life in which my livestock actually gets to range free.

In a whirlwind of accomplishment last weekend, Dad and I got the tar paper on the roof of the coop—a crucial step to prepare for the actual roofing material. But then there were two evenings of rather violent storms yesterday and tonight, and when I went around doing damage check late this evening after the rain stopped, this is what I found:

So much for those staples I used to attach the tar paper to the roof!

I fetched the deficient stapler and hauled myself onto the coop. There I relaid the tar paper and peppered its surface with staples, hoping that perhaps a constellation of weak metal would make up for having the proper tool for the job.

While I was up on the roof, the sky blazed up with hot pink clouds and a cool breeze came off the mountain to cut our almost-100 degree day.

I lay on my back and watched the clouds fade from magenta through puce to ballet pink. Above my head, a fat contrail chased a small jet flying west. And for once, I didn’t wish that I was on it.

The keets turned eleven weeks old on Tuesday.

Their favorite thing is eating grass—in fact, the only time they will willingly approach me is when I extend a fistful of greenery their way. Things got a little tough during the drought we recently had. All the grass on the farm dried up and blew away with the dust. I haven’t mown for more than a month, and haven’t even assembled the new mower I bought to replace my other that I killed by running over a gnarly big tree root that was hidden in the grass. Back when we had grass! I even saw an ad on CraigsList that a farmer was selling his entire herd of cattle (15 head) because there was nothing for them to eat in the field.

And then last week we got a few storms that dumped a couple of much-needed inches. The pasture greened up, and things started growing again.

The keets continue to exercise their loud new voices, and each time I hear them all launch into a cacophonous chorus, I am glad I built their coop relatively far from the house!

Their wattles continue to grow, and they are sprouting bony protrusions that will become the “helmets” on each bird’s head.

One reason that I am including so many guinea photos, other than that I find them neat, is that I have had such a hard time finding good-quality images of guineas in all stages of their development. I hope that I can do a service to any other birdkeeper who’d like to know what they are getting into!

In other birdwatching news, I have really been enjoying the hummingbirds as they come to feed on the back porch. They never cease to amaze me with their crazy flying and admirable aggressiveness as they chase each another around the sky.

So after a late-night finish last Thursday, I spent Friday moving the guineas into their new house. Which was close to the most stressful part of this whole project. I donned safety glasses and a face mask and leather gloves and entered their box in the garage. They, like the wild animals—with WINGS—they are, freaked out. They massed together into an explosive guinea bomb with birds shooting left and right and up and down trying to escape my deerskin clutches. It was all I could do to blindly grab at their body parts, wincing as I felt leg joints pop (forgive me for thinking “Buffalo wings!!”) and soft tissue smash beneath my fingers.

Each bird I managed to extract came out fighting, with me clamping it to my stomach to try to control its wings. My belly is scarred by slashes. I look like I’ve taken part in a bear fight, not moving day for 16 one-pound birds.

But, prevail I did, taking each guinea outside and hurling it into its new palatial estate. I hung around for about a second after each to make sure the poor dears could still hobble, and then I went back for more. Sixteen freaking times.

I am proud to say I had only two escapees within the garage during this process, and by force of rage I soon had those transfered too. We all sat for a while in the coop, all 17 of us animals panting:

And then I got up, went in the house, and took my reward. And yes, it was a double.

The hours put into this project have run together just like the sweat and sawdust that mixed on my skin as I worked. But continue we must, as the birds weren’t growing any younger in their garage box. So, we got the siding up and positioned and nailed:

And then cut out the openings for all the doors and windows:

All the siding is on and the roofing as well. I must say, having a tractor to pick some of this stuff up was great.

I spent at least nine hours on July 4 painting circles around the coop. The T1-11 siding really drank up the barn paint I was using. I like white farm buildings, remember, so that was the natural choice for this little house. Plus, I am hoping it will help keep it cool inside.

Then I put 1/4″ hardware cloth inside all the window openings, hammering in poultry staples every few inches for a tight fit. And then I screened in the eave vents, with the idea being to eliminate any access point for predators. And then I installed the windows—storm windows that I put in with their latches facing outside so that I could open and close them without actually going inside the coop—like when I am all dressed up and on my way out to work!

Meanwhile, Dad framed in the wall that will divide the bird area from the storage area, and he built four beautiful custom doors: a front door, a storage/bird area door, a cleanout door for the opening beneath the roosts, and a tiny “chicken” door that will provide the birds access to the wild blue yonder.

Here’s about where the temperature was—in the shade—during this entire construction project. It’s been a beastly slog, up at 7 a.m. and working until 9, 10 at night during a rainless heat wave.

But the good news is that after a few late nights last week, including a Thursday night that ended at 11 p.m., the coop is done! Well, done enough to move the birds in anyway—I still need to trim the doors and windows and put on the roof, which is sporting a space-age silver tarp until I can get that done.

The whole project has been way more involved than I ever thought it would be…but I am happy to say that it is great and I think it will be just perfect for my needs and the birds’ too. If there is one thing I know about keeping animals it is that their enclosures need to be well designed and well built to keep caring for them from being a dreaded chore.

And this coop is built solid as a tank, so if this whole bird thing doesn’t work out, I have a really nice guest cottage!

The guineas turned eight weeks old yesterday. Since being moved into their larger enclosure, they seem to have doubled in size. They eat about four pounds of food a day, and drink close to a gallon of water. They are also molting again, turning my garage into a toxic waste dump with their dander. I enter to serve them donned in a face mask and safety goggles after having an allergic reaction to all the dust. I can’t wait until they are in their proper coop and I can reclaim—and clean—the garage.

Speaking of coop, last weekend was again spent in construction mode from almost-dawn to nightfall. We got an early start Friday evening when I had the day off work because of a crazy storm/tornado that came through Thursday night and knocked out power to my office as it decimated a huge swath of town. It was again beastly hot and the weekend was peppered with sessions spent panting, lying prone on the ground from heat exhaustion. I also whacked the heck out of my head on some of the framing Saturday, and ended that day with a sick headache and stars in my eyes.

Physical discomfort aside, we managed to locate windows and install the sheet vinyl floor. The we got all four walls framed in:

I cut rafters and we got those up and nailed in. We waited out a quick rainshower Sunday evening—

—Before starting to put up siding late Sunday night.

We got the front of the coop completely sided before it got too dark to continue working, and then we wrapped the whole structure in tarps to guard against rain until we can again tackle the project. The plan is to side the whole thing and then go back and cut out the door and window openings.

Meanwhile, isn’t it interesting that the white keets have blue eyes?

And did you know, I have a three-headed gorgon living in my garage?