Guineas

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Little Joe

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You have to look hard to see them, the hen just hatched 9 new baby guineas. She came up missing for a while and we finallly found her in a flower bed sitting a nest. Mama and daddy teaching the little ones how to scavenge and survive on their own. We don't feed our guineas they just scavenge around and also eat what the calves we're feeding drop.51A383D2-DE9A-4589-9582-05836500EB6F.jpeg
 
Nice! Do you have free range chickens as well? I hear guineas make good look outs for predators and help keep the chickens safe.
 
I love guineas. They're probably the most nervous bird in existence. I can walk out the door every morning same time same place and about half the time they start cackling like they never seen me before, cheap entertainment!
 
I've never had any but hear they are good for eating ticks. The older folks fussed about how noisy they were and said that they would fly up and break out a windshield.
 
We had about a dozen for less than a year. They roosted in an old barn. I didn't mind them. The wife wanted them to eat ticks. Spring came and the hens laid eggs. The hens were killed by some predator in the spring while setting on eggs. Males either by a predator or one was hit by a car. I'd get more, but I am not sure what I would do different to keep them alive. They don't like being locked up. We keep chickens without any problems. Chickens won't fly out of their run.
 
I started with
We had about a dozen for less than a year. They roosted in an old barn. I didn't mind them. The wife wanted them to eat ticks. Spring came and the hens laid eggs. The hens were killed by some predator in the spring while setting on eggs. Males either by a predator or one was hit by a car. I'd get more, but I am not sure what I would do different to keep them alive. They don't like being locked up. We keep chickens without any problems. Chickens won't fly out of their run.
4 adult guineas about a year ago, coons killed one and I think one of my dogs might've killed another. Of the 9 little ones that were hatched this hen has raised 4 free range, those 4 are big enough to fly now so should be fine. I don't feed them or do anything for them, they either make it or don't. I figure the 4 that made it will be tough little boogers and should thrive well now.
 
I wonder if the instincts to survive haven't been bred out of some of these guineas. I would like to have some around if they survived on their own like yours.
 
We had about a dozen for less than a year. They roosted in an old barn. I didn't mind them. The wife wanted them to eat ticks. Spring came and the hens laid eggs. The hens were killed by some predator in the spring while setting on eggs. Males either by a predator or one was hit by a car. I'd get more, but I am not sure what I would do different to keep them alive. They don't like being locked up. We keep chickens without any problems. Chickens won't fly out of their run.
The strains of Guinea fowl I have seen in the USA and Europe, are the larger, domesticates breeds.I wonder if sourcing the smaller, wild strains would improve their survival due to having better "wild" instincts. With a large population of predators, from jackals to civet cats, we still had a healthy population of native guineas on the conservancy, and shot several hundred surplus every winter, calculated on an annual basis.
 
The strains of Guinea fowl I have seen in the USA and Europe, are the larger, domesticates breeds.I wonder if sourcing the smaller, wild strains would improve their survival due to having better "wild" instincts. With a large population of predators, from jackals to civet cats, we still had a healthy population of native guineas on the conservancy, and shot several hundred surplus every winter, calculated on an annual basis.
I wonder how a person would go about finding a source for the smaller, wild strains that could survive on their own? I don't know enough about Guinea fowl to know which ones would be better than others.
 
I wonder how a person would go about finding a source for the smaller, wild strains that could survive on their own? I don't know enough about Guinea fowl to know which ones would be better than others.
Wildlife parks or Zoos would be the best contacts, for hotter climates the common helmeted guinea fowl would be the best to try, for cooler, wetter climates the crested should do better, they are usually in the mountains in their native countries.
 

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