Raising Keets
The Easy way to get a keet to eat out of your hand
~
When they are put into the brooder box for their first time, each and every time
you change the flooring, or disturb them in any way do this.....
At first I would just sprinkle their food from way above (Manna from the
Heavens) making sure their foods would bounce and get their attention, they
would run and get them (like the feed were bugs) slowly I would let them see the
food come from my hand.
Then I would lower my hand and let the food fall from it while they can see it
easy (of course they would run for the four corners like their life depended on
it) after a day or two of this (I change the paper towels very often, I have a
stack of them in the box and just take off the top one) it pretty much becomes
normal for them to get foods after I bother them.
Then I let them have a few wild mustard blossoms ( I always say to them "evvvreebody
loves wild mustard" I have a mass of it growing everywhere. All
the birds go crazy for them) I pick the blossoms off the stem and they only get
the flower part.
I then give them a few millet seeds, first time letting them
drop, the second letting them roll from my fingers as I hold my hand down at their
level. They come running and snatch them as they hit the floor bouncing.. then I
wiggle my fingers and they come running to see what that is, and then with my
finger wiggling and the millet dropping from them one of the keets pecks my
fingers and more rolls down. They do this a few times.
By the next time I put my hand in the box.. they come running to my hand, and
this time two of them peck at my fingers, and then like a light bulb - "If
I peck first, I get more millet" and then all of a sudden they all want to
eat of my hand. Only if it is moving slightly... I have found if I just hold my
hand unmoving, it makes them wary. I count this up to, if I were their mamma
guinea I would not be still, I would me moving about and stuff. Anyhow here is a
photo - proof they are eating out of my hand.
Not an easy photo to take, as I am holding my left hand to the keets, and my
right hand has to take the photo... I am left handed.
Thanks to Gardner Guineaherder for allowing us to reproduce
this post from our message board.