guinea keet

Two keets met grim ends: what went wrong with this batch of eggs

Two keets, two days old, two grim endings, and I'm left wondering if I missed something or if the eggs were doomed from the start. One couldn't poop without help, its vent stuck open like a gaping hole no amount of soaking could fix. The other couldn't walk, rolling onto its side until it ran out of steam. I had to put them both down because watching them suffer felt worse than making the call. I'm betting the real culprit was how long those eggs sat outside, forgotten on the counter and past their prime. Low hatch rates and weird deformities in the rest of the batch seem to back that up.