Just when I think I’ve seen every different Guinea fowl behavior, our large flock of pearl gray Guinea fowl shows me something new. If you look at the three photographs at the end of this blog, you’ll see the new behavior I am referring to.
The adult Guinea fowl hen in the photographs below hatched 16 keets this year, many of which are visible in the photographs. She was a dutiful broody Guinea fowl hen and is an excellent mother.
The keets in the photographs below are about 3½ weeks old, so they are pretty good size Guinea fowl. These photographs were taken at late dusk with the flash, which is why the backgrounds are so dark.
Note the keet sitting atop the roosting hen. This Guinea fowl keet sits on his adult Guinea fowl hen mother many times during the day, and invariably at night. The keet does not just jump up on top of the hen and quietly sit down, either. As you can tell from these photographs, which were taken about 2 minutes apart, the keet moves around and shifts positions frequently.
We’ve never seen a Guinea fowl keet get on top of its mother hen and stay on top of her. We have seen keets jump up on the hen momentarily, but the hen quickly shakes them off, unless the keet quickly jumps off on its own.
We have seen, on a couple of occasions, this keet actually riding the adult Guinea fowl hen as she walks around foraging. We have noticed that the hen will only allow this for short periods of time, which is why we have not been able to get a video of it. But it is noteworthy that the hen will allow this keet to stay on her back at all as she walks.
No other keets in this hatch get on top of the hen – at least not that we’ve ever seen. It makes us wonder what has inspired this keet to behave like this. Of course we also wonder why the hen allows this behavior.
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