Abandoned nest...now what?

[WendyNP]

Found my young guinea hen's nest in a blackberry bramble. She visited it and laid another egg daily, until 2 days ago. There was a big storm and apparently she has now abandoned the nest (we caught her snooping around in a different bramble and think she is laying there now. My question is, are the eggs still viable if I put them under a hen? From what I understand, the eggs are in a sort of suspended animation until she starts sitting on them so that they'll all hatch at once. So how long to I have to find an alternate-mother for them? Long enough to buy an incubator and figure out how to use it??

 

[SimoneG]

I'm not positive but last year when I found a nest it had about 25 eggs in it she was on & off the nest a lot before I took the eggs. I did end up with a couple hatching . (borrowed an incy and didn't really have a clue what I was doing) so I'd say a few days for sure.

 

[justin shrew]

most guineahens will abandon their nest if the is unsually thing around their nests. the eggs are strong enought to endure the storm and still hatch. it may also depend on the season which eggs are laid in summer the temp and humidity are quite high, eggs usually last few days. keep eggs in cool place and rotate them every day. they normally last for 7 to 12 days. but if kept in good conditions they can last up to a full month. i had keets hatched from eggs being store for a while and those keets are the members of the flock.

 

[BoogieBug]

My guinea hen sat on her nest of 36 eggs for three and a half weeks wthout moving off of them, then all of a sudden, with just a few days left to go, I saw her outside the coop. That evening, she was on the roost with the others, so I checked on the eggs. None hatched. After four days of her not sitting on the eggs at all, I collected them. I held each one over a bright spotlight and those that did not have a formed embryo, I kept. The rest went into the trash. Heart breaking.

 

[BlueShadow]

I am assuming from your question that she has begun to set on the eggs and incubate them? If so, yes, you can put them in an incubator, but the sooner, the better. The longer they are cool, the less chance the keets will make it. You have a much better chance of finding an incubator than you do of finding another hen that will sit on that nest.

 

[WendyNP]

most guineahens will abandon their nest if the is unsually thing around their nests. the eggs are strong enought to endure the storm and still hatch. it may also depend on the season which eggs are laid in summer the temp and humidity are quite high, eggs usually last few days. keep eggs in cool place and rotate them every day. they normally last for 7 to 12 days. but if kept in good conditions they can last up to a full month. i had keets hatched from eggs being store for a while and those keets are the members of the flock.

Thank you for the input. I decided to go ahead and try incubating them. They had been abandoned 3 days, and it took me another 3 days to get an incubator and set it up. Today I candled the eggs and all but one have an embryo developing.
Also, think I figured out why she abandoned the nest. I thought it was the storm, but then I realized that was the same day when the trash truck came and emptied our dumpster (which was only about 20 feet away from her nest.
Regardless, the eggs seem to have survived the ordeal pretty well.

 

[justin shrew]

if i were a guineafowl i would say, The are many questions waiting to be answered even though some of them are hard to be understood.

guineafowls are very far different from the birds we mainly know, chickens. the relationship between the mother and eggs is never well know, but in many way we predict it as weak. the females dont like their nest to be disturbed.
she might abandon her nest if her eggs were scattered around her nest.
she might abandon her nest if one of her eggs were cracked by something she dont know
she might abandon her nest if a predator spooked her off.
she might abandon her nest if the is too much noise around her nest and felt unsafe
she might abandon her nest, just out of reasons. where she feels like her nest is no longer at its privacy.
when she has sit for too long on the nest withought any hatchling.

But the main thing that cause guineahens to reject their eggs and nest is when her nest was disturbed. but not all the mothers out there react the same way to their nests. some guineashens will fight to death if predators come near their nests, and still continue the incubation period.

best wishes...

 

[WendyNP]

Started off with 14 eggs in the incubator. One was infertile after 7 days, but all others were developing nicely. The day I put them in lockdown, we had another horrible storm that night.

The power went out and was off for most of the night. My husband offered to set up the generator, but there was so much cloud to ground lightning that I wouldn't let him go outside. So, I wrapped the incubator up in a blanket and hoped for the best. The power came back on early the next morning...and when I checked the eggs they were ice cold. We were sure they were all a loss.
That evening after they had warmed up, I candled a few and they all had movement! A few days later I had 12 healthy chicks hatch.
Turns out, eggs are a lot more forgiving of neglect, inexperience, and random acts of God. That, or I just had a bout of beginners luck!