When do guineas pick mates?

[AMoritz]

I've had guineas for a couple years now but I've never paid attention to when the young ones choose their mates.
Now I have 3 young lavenders that I want a pair out of.
When do they pick their mates? Before breeding season in spring?
I'm thinking about possibly putting the lavenders in their own enclosure around that time until they start laying eggs to ensure a mated lavender pair.

Or am I wrong in my thinking?

 

[R2elk]

I've had guineas for a couple years now but I've never paid attention to when the young ones choose their mates.
Now I have 3 young lavenders that I want a pair out of.
When do they pick their mates? Before breeding season in spring?
I'm thinking about possibly putting the lavenders in their own enclosure around that time until they start laying eggs to ensure a mated lavender pair.

Or am I wrong in my thinking?

My experience is that when breeding season rituals start in the spring, the hens pick their mate. Once the males get their status sorted out, the dominant male may take a hen away from a lower male. Late in the season some males may take additional mates when their hen is staying on a nest.

If you want to do selective breeding in a pen, make sure the pen is not too small. Some people have had severe infertility problems when keeping the mates in too tight of confinement. If you pen the Lavenders together in a sufficiently large pen, as long as there is at least one male and one hen you should be okay.

Sorry, I don't know what size the pen should be.

 

[AMoritz]

Our coop is big enough for 60+ chickens to be in comfortably, so the pen would be about 1/3 of that size for just the 3 lavenders. That's great info though, ty!

 

[red horse ranch]

I have found that my Lavender hen has mostly Lavender babies no matter which of my different colored males she picks for a mate. Some of my hens pick a mate that they stay with but a few of my hens may have 2 or 3 different mates during the breeding season. The 2 hens I have now switched mates after brooding this season. I've only had a couple of hens that stayed with the same mate for years.

Why not keep all 3 of your Lavender guineas together? You might have 2 females in the group. That way you can be sure of having Lavender keets.

 

[R2elk]

I have found that my Lavender hen has mostly Lavender babies no matter which of my different colored males she picks for a mate. Some of my hens pick a mate that they stay with but a few of my hens may have 2 or 3 different mates during the breeding season. The 2 hens I have now switched mates after brooding this season. I've only had a couple of hens that stayed with the same mate for years.

Why not keep all 3 of your Lavender guineas together? You might have 2 females in the group. That way you can be sure of having Lavender keets.

As long as the recessive blue is not overcome by the dominant Pearl Gray, the full dotting gene of the Lavender is a dominant gene needing only one copy of the gene for the trait to be expressed which would cause any blue based guineas with the full dotting gene to be Lavenders.