More fowl ... and that's a good thing!

Seven guineas hatched today, and, luckily, we found them in the grass and moved them into a warm (and safe) spot in the barn.  My mom says I am running a restaurant for raccoons; that may be so, but I can make it as difficult as possible for them!  I will try to get a picture of them tomorrow. 

Last week five peachicks hatched; they are fluffy and yellow, and safe in the pheasant coop.  (The pheasants are locked outside, for now.)  The mother peahen is white, so I figured all her chicks would be white; but, I did a quick perusal of peafowl genetics online and discovered that blue is dominant in peafowl.  So, since the father is blue, the chicks should all LOOK blue, but carry the white gene.  Technically they will be "blue split white".  Unless, of course, the father only LOOKS blue; if he is actually blue split white, some of the chicks may turn out white!  So, now I am curious to see what they are, and by extension, what their father is!

And, several weeks ago, eight chickens hatched, some araucana and some an araucana/marans mix.  (The rooster was araucana, the eggs came from several hens, both araucana and marans.)  They are about half grown now;  one looks just like the mother hen, two look like marans (one black, one gray), and the rest are mostly rust colored with black touches.   Don't know yet if there are any roosters in the bunch, but I will keep watching.  Also don't know yet where the other two hens are laying their eggs, which is getting annoying; I had to buy eggs last week!