Guinea Chicks!
I'm so excited! I've got a shipment of little guinea chicks!
They were in a Pepsi box when I picked them up - a loud box, objecting to being moved around. They settled down on my lap for the ride home, and then I carried them gently to the hen yard.The guineas are going to get the chickery for the time being. The former residents got bumped up to Silkieland the night before - their final promotion. I also moved Silkieland, so that everyone in there would have maximum entertainment on the chicks' first day. 
Inside the box. Seven little striped brown heads - they look nothing like they will when they grow up.
I tore open the box and placed it in the chickery to let them come out on their own time.
A half hour later.There they are, all settled down.
Another half hour later.They are approximately one centimeter nearer to the door of their box.Their own time is never fast enough for me. I tore the lid further open (alarmed cheeping!) and left them alone again
An hour later.All of them hiding behind the box!And then, a bit later, busy foraging like normal chicks:
Adorable. They have these wide orange beaks, like tiny puffins, except they look mostly like striped chicken chicks.They happily darted about being chicks all day, and at night we went to box them up and move them into the greenhouse. This is what we found:
They were all tucked up, nearly invisible, as concealed as they could manage in the short grass. So clever, already.I'm going to attempt an adoption. It's a bit of a stretch, but these are little African birds that just came out from under a lamp, so they are going to be cold without a heat source.I took a hen out of the Silkie coop that just went broody, and I'm going to swap out her eggs tonight for a bunch of guineas.Surprise! Your eggs hatched super fast! And the chicks are unusually large.
The Adoption failed. I tucked the guineas under the broody hen in the night and slipped out the eggs and no one was very perturbed.In the morning though, the hen utterly refused to mother them, and completely ignored them when I put them all in the chickery.She was NOT fooled.In fact, she was clearly pining, staring through the bars of the cage. To underline her disconsolation, while I was watching her she lifted a leg and wistfully rested her foot on the mesh wall like a hand, in appeal.I couldn't resist, I promptly put her back in a box with a set of eggs.