Building Unity Farm - The Guinea Fowl are Born

It's August in New England and although everyone in healthcare IT is consumed by Meaningful Use stage 2, ICD10, ACA, the HIPAA Omnibus Rule, and various compliance initiatives, it's also the time we try to take a few hours off before the busy Fall.   Although I'm not taking any vacation this year, I have reduced my writing schedule (hence fewer blog posts this month) and spent more time at Unity Farm.This week our first 20 guinea fowl hatched and the keets (the name for young guinea fowl) are running around the brooder, eating, drinking, chirping, and sleeping.Here's how we did it.Guinea fowl are terrible parents.  They lay eggs in a community pile and one female incubates them all.   Unfortunately, they tend to lay in the forest near fox dens, fisher cat habitat, and coyote trails.   We've lost several females this Summer but luckily found the nests and gathered the eggs before they were too chilled to be viable.We placed them incubators at 100F and 50% humidity.   The gestation period of a guinea is 26-28 days.Automated egg turners slowly moved the eggs for the first 23 days.  Then we laid them flat in the incubator, making it easy for the chicks to peck through the shells.On day 25, one of the larger eggs started to roll, crack, and chirp.    A few hours later, a piebald keet was born  (Keets come in pearl black, white, grey, and piebald).On day 26 and 27, the rest of the eggs popped like popcorn with little keets running a...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs