The guineas did it!

This story has a happy ending! Promise!

This is so strange. Everything I've read says guinea hens are notoriously bad mothers. I've read they don't stay around for all their eggs to hatch, they take their babies out and about even though they are too young, and you have to take their babies away if they are going to survive. 

Our story here at The Mother Ranch is a little different:

It begins around September 10, at least that's when I took the first photo of Millie (the light grey one) and Georgette (the dark one) sitting on a clutch of 20ish eggs. 

Brad built a cage around them out of some bendy wire fencing so we could lock them in at night. They would have been coyote food otherwise.

5 weeks (we thought it was 5 weeks but it must have been 4) went by and Brad and I just figured that the eggs weren't going to hatch. It's fall, we've had our first freeze or two and we thought it had been more than 30 days since the hens had started laying on their eggs. Darn. No luck. Bummer, because even though I don't want to raise baby birds of ANY KIND, these moms had done an amazing job. They worked together, which I loved and were so committed! (Don't worry, I have someone who will take any babies that hatch.)

Yesterday evening Brad found the nest without the mamas (which happens, they do go out and eat sometimes), checked the eggs and they were all very cold. 2 dead baby guineas were under the eggs. He took out all the unhatched eggs and saw that one was trying to hatch! He put the eggs in a box and took them into our now empty chicken house (all the chickens were processed a week and a half ago), turned on a heat lamp and left. He was worried that the hatching one would get too cold without the moms laying on it. 

What the heck do we know?!? This was a BIG heating bulb, and unbeknownst to us, 250 watts. Sigh. The poor eggs were screaming hot when we went to check them. :-(

So, we killed all the guinea babies. That was sad and to top it off, Georgette was nowhere to be found when it was time to lock the guineas in their coop for the night. She must have gotten swiped by a coyote. Not a happy day.

However! The story has a happy ending!

This morning, no Georgette.  

Early afternoon and Brad announced that Georgette was back! Hurray! And later he found our flock of 5 guineas (3 girls and 2 boys) wandering around with 5 tiny babies stumbling after them! Georgette must have been keeping them safe and warm somewhere overnight!

Seriously, how did that happen? Where in the world did those babies come from and how did we not see them? When Georgette and Millie left the nest yesterday did their babies jump out after them? It's about a  12" drop to the ground but they must have! Tough little babies. I wonder if the moms would have gone back to sit on the remaining eggs? 

I called my guinea guru to see what we should do. I set up their pen according to her instructions. When I was all ready I found the moms in a sheltered spot with the 5 babies and Millie came out with her feathers ruffled out so she looked about twice her normal size. Okay then. She was being protective. Good.

Later, I noticed they were out with the flock again. This time there were only 4 (we searched by never found number 5). We watched them wandering around after the adults and noticed them shivering. Nothing more pathetic than a 3" tall bird shivering! Brad and I scooped them up and put them in the adult's coop in some straw under a 150 watt heat lamp. The babies immediately burrowed down into the straw and disappeared. Once we left, the whole flock came in to be with them! Millie and Georgette are continuing to keep their babies warm by laying on them! I'm so surprised!

So back to all I've read:

•They don't stay around for all their eggs to hatch--we don't know if this is true or not yet. They did leave and take their hatchlings with them but would they have come back? If they had what would have happened to the hatched out babies? They couldn't reach the nest.

•They take their babies out and about even though they are too young--this is true but they seemed to stop and find a place to warm them up every so often.

•You have to take their babies away if they are going to survive--this remains to be seen but I'm very impressed with their willingness to work together, to protect, and to continue to lay on them to keep them warm!

I think The Mother Ranch guineas have earned pretty good marks in the mothering department. I know I won't question them again! 

I will however, question the wattage of a heat lamp from now on :-/

This evening: Millie and Georgette laying on the babies. Manfred and George look on from the right. Angelica (the white one) has always been a bit scattered since her mate was killed by a coyote.

We begin again.

August 23, 2016.

My 47th birthday.

“It’s too big. It’s too scary. It’s been too long. No one will understand. No one cares. It’s waaaaay TMI. Just put it behind you. Move on. I wonder what’s on Netflix that I haven’t seen yet…”
My inner critic has been working overtime and she’s really loud and really persuasive. It IS easier to tune out, zone out, disconnect than have to feel ONE MORE FEELING about this situation.

But then…

My Inner Voice (and yes, I capitalize it because it comes from God, Source, the Divine) whispers, “Just tell the truth.”

My guess is that this story will be somewhat disjointed for awhile. My mind, usually fairly step-by-step and logical in the way I write a story, swirls with PTSD now and my heart jumps between pain so big that I’m scared to let it out more than the tiniest wisps, and relief at being free of the day to day horror. Writing about the past year is excruciating. I'll be writing along and all of a sudden my mind blanks. This has never happened to me before. I know what it is and I know why it is but it's still tough to accept it.

It’s been a bit more than a year since I stopped. I stopped day to day care of Loreli (I've changed both of the kid's names to pseudonyms). It was the end of July 2015 that I gave up. There was nothing more to give her. Every positive interaction she allowed was twisted up and given back to Daniel, the dogs, and me in hate, fury, and abuse. She was ten years old and had been with us for nearly 6 years. I enrolled her in full time daycare. Brad picked her up at 6:00pm. I told Brad that Daniel and I would no longer be in the house alone with her. If she was there, then he was there. Brad didn’t know exactly what was going on but agreed.

(One of the many ways to tell a RAD family is by the family members who do NOT have RAD. The mom is depressed (unexpressed anger), withdrawn, ultra protective of her other children and pets. She treats the child with RAD differently and often insists on structure and line of sight for the RAD child but not her others. The mom, siblings, and pets are targets for the RAD child's abuse and she has to stay on high alert (hypervigilance) in order to keep everyone as safe as possible. The dad, 99.9% of the time, is targeted differently. He is targeted to see the child with RAD in a sunnier way. He almost NEVER sees the abuse, as the child with RAD waits until he is gone before starting in. This is called "triangulation" or sometimes "splitting" and results in the divorce of 80% of marriages with RAD kids.)

Once Loreli was in full time day care, Daniel and I began to have our summer. There was only about a month left of it at that point but we made every moment count. We went swimming a lot, to the museum, zoo, and aquarium. We had fun. It was weird and good and scary, and so needed.

We both let the steam out, one tiny bit at a time. We both were like tightly coiled springs.

As with all holidays with a kid with Reactive Attachment Disorder, Thanksgiving was ruined. Everything was fine until it was time to eat and then the screaming started. I didn’t even try to help her, I knew that as soon as I did and we had a good, bonding moment, she would turn around and hurt Daniel, the dogs, or me. It is the cycle of a child with severe RAD. A tiny part of her wants the love but a bigger part of her is living in the past with the person who hurt her. That part will not allow her to accept love. That’s the part that will insist that harming Daniel, the dogs, or me is crucial for her survival.

After Thanksgiving, a frustrated and defeated Daniel said, “If she’s here for Christmas then I’m going to stay in my bedroom.” So sayeth a child who has no power and no hope.

She was not here for Christmas.

We accepted a spot for Loreli at The Institute for Attachment and Child Development.

The Institute is different from any other program in that they have all of the structure and therapy of a residential treatment center but the children live in an actual home with a real mom and dad (who have both been trained and have their own experience with RAD), their children and several other treatment kids. What this means is that the children with RAD cannot triangulate as easily. In an RTC, which have rotating staff, it is known that the children constantly triangulate (pitting one caregiver against another).

She left on December 9, 2015. Very quickly we were told that Loreli has severe RAD. As with this entire process, I felt relief and grief. What we had been experiencing for 6 years wasn’t “just” RAD (which is bad enough) but severe RAD. I learned that Daniel and I really did have PTSD from living with this abusive child. I learned that they expected to work with her for at least a year.

Daniel and I had a year to heal…from 6 years of abuse.