About

The farmingfriends website was set up at the end of 2006 and started as a diary of daily life on the farm but has grown into an online magazine and forum community packed with information, resources and products relating to farming, keeping livestock, food and nature. If you are a farmer, smallholder, animal enthusiast, parent, child or anyone interested in animals and the farming lifestyle, then the Farming Friends website and forum is for you.

Menu

Magpies Are Eating My Guinea Fowl Eggs

On Sunday I found 3 guinea fowl eggs in the vegetable garden, under some of my purple sprouting broccoli plants. I decided to collect the eggs and replace them with an old guinea egg (which I had found in the field hedgerow a few days earlier and was unsure of it’s age) and a pot egg.

Foolishly, I replaced the eggs at night, instead of the following morning. When I returned to the nest on Monday morning, I couldn’t believe that the real guinea egg and the pot egg had both gone. I wouldn’t mind but this is the second pot egg I have lost.

I think it’s magpies because every day we have four magpies circling the fields and sitting on the fence posts, just waiting for the guinea fowl to lay. In an attempt to beat the magpies to the eggs, I am having to patrol the hedgerows to 3 fields, the lane, the orchard, the veg garden and my garden every few hours. The exercise is certainly keeping me fit but it very time consuming.

Some days I am lucky and I can find between 1 and 6 eggs, although other days I find none, which is very annoying as I know that my adult guinea hens lay everyday.

Yesterday I found 6 eggs in a nest under the broccoli plants, so I hope they keep laying there, but I can’t risk leaving the eggs so that they will lay there again because of the magpies.

I think I am going to try to make a nest site out of one of my old huts that no longer has a door on it. If I can get the guineas to lay in there then it will save me lots of time and keep their eggs protected abit more from the magpies.