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Pearl Guinea

Pearl guinea fowl are related to other game birds including pheasants, turkeys, and partridges....

General Information

Breed Colors/Varieties
Grey with small white dots
Breed Size
Large Fowl
Pearl guinea fowl are related to other game birds including pheasants, turkeys, and partridges. They were domesticated from the helmeted guineafowl found
in Africa.

Latest reviews

Pros: Can watch them for hours, love to cuddle, (mine) aren’t that dumb, look after eachother, beautiful feathers
Cons: Can be loud
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Haha, i can’t think of any more cons to be honest.
Totday they turned 16 weeks already...time flies...
We also have a rooster and a chicken, but the rooster doesn’t seem to accept the guineas (yet?).
That’s why i keep them inside (for now) in a cage (at night)..(i know some of you may find that weird/wrong). During the day they walk around the house and outside in our bigger chicken coop. We also have a little coop, where they’re able to eat from our garden.
Our 3 guineas are very tame; they’re sitting with us on the couch and love to cuddle and ‘take baths’ on their blanket.
They also love to explore the house, they follow us around and are ‘talking’ almost all the time:)
I really have to say i don’t think they’re dumb at all, they do understand many things, i mean, you can teach them. I think that has to do with the way they were raised. They do remember things very well.
Like, they know exactly when i’m going to sleep, it gets quiet and when i talk to them, like “goodnight sweeties” they do respond.
When my husband gets up early in the morning, they start ‘talking’ to him immediately (haha, yes we checked that).
Anyways, i so love them!:love
Purchase Price
Few €
Purchase Date
October 2018

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Pros: They help with tick control
Cons: Super loud
aggressive towards my other birds
You remember those crisp fall mornings where you could just sit on your porch with a cup of coffee and enjoy the quiet sounds of nature?

Well if you get guinea fowl those days are gone. These things never shut up and have the most annoying squawk I've ever heard. They just squawk and squawk all day long. Heaven forbid if they actually like you because then they follow you around every time you go outside screaming for attention, literally.

We have two guinea fowl, 30+ chickens, and 3 ducks. The only think you ever hear when you go outside is the guineas. They are little feathered bundles of nightmare. They are also quite aggressive towards our chickens and will push them off the food bowls. The ducks seem to hold their own though.

The only good thing I've found from Hankry and Pankry (the names given to them by my daughter) is this year is supposed to have been an incredibly bad year for ticks. If you go into our field you will get covered in ticks, but around our coop and the yard its virtually tick free. They also make fairly good predator alarms if you can ever figure out which noise is the alarm noise and which is just the plain "hey look at me" noise.

If you happen to buy a couple of these make sure you stock up on tylenol.
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Pros: eats: ticks, bugs, snakes, mice, and weeds. Feathers are pretty.
Cons: You have to have a large yard for free ranging, noisy, small eggs, not the friendliest.
I'm going to be honest. Guineas are not for anyone. Most of the time, guineas are antisocial, noisy jerks. If you handle them from keets, though, you can get them to let you hold and play with them. They are noisy and will NOT shut up, so I suggest a coop not attached to your house. Also, the neighbors might object to the noisiness...
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However, if you live in the country, with lots of pests, the guineas will be perfect. They will kill snakes and mice as well as ticks and other pests. Some people think they're the ugliest things on the face of the planet, but to a guinea person, they are adorable. They are fun to watch when they run around the yard in a little flock. They are FAST!!! I use their feathers for projects, like making Christmas ornaments. Not city birds, but I think they are great. If you're not a guinea person, though, they can be annoying and obnoxious. Gotta love em, though!
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Comments

They can be trying. It is due to the way they are raised. Generations of hatchery raised guineas have left little or no mother instinct. Guineas were originally from Africa and live in a symbiotic relationship with elephants. They keep the insects groomed off the elephants and the elephants give them protection from the large and small predators. If you have a herd animal on your farm like sheep, goats or cattle you can raise them in a grow out pen in with the goats or sheep and beside the cattle. I say that because the cattle are strong enough to wreck a light bird pen if they want to raid it for the grain.

I bonded mine to my sheep. They would follow the sheep around all day and roost in the trees above them at night. In the winter they would ride on their backs with their feet buried into their wool for warmth. Before they were feathered out I had them in a cage with paper plates with sheep faces drawn on them taped to their cage so they would imprint.

The girls are the noisy chatterbox screamers. If you are just wanting tick control and meat birds run a bachelor flock. The noise will halve without the females goading it on. I had one bird live 9 years. Of course I lost the pushy females early (they insisted on challenging dogs), but had 3 boys out of the nine I had originally bought survive for 5 (wouldn't stay out of my stallions feed bucket), 6, and 9 years.

They gave the alarm that brought me running from my neighbors house to my field to find that 5 dogs had slipped through the fence and were corning my sheep.

If you want to breed them pen the girls with the appropriate number of breeding males and run a bachelor flock for the tick control. To get guineas that will take better care of their babies hatch some under a broody chicken who is a good mother. She will program their little brains for the appropriate behavior when they have babies.
 
They weren't hatchery raised, we raised them nicely and gave them special things and their health was great, they aren't smart. I think no bird can top their dumbness.
 
Oh I am not arguing that they are not stupid. I have watched them many a time pacing for an hour or more back and forth at a fenceline wanting on the other side. It wasn't until my Sheltie would get annoyed with them and would rush them that they would "remember" that they could fly. My theory is that they are hardwired. That there is a short time when they are chicks that they can learn and everything else is hard wired instinct. Roughly if they don't see it and learn from other birds by 3 months they won't ever understand it. People often raise turkeys with baby chickens so the chicks can teach them how to eat and drink. I think guinea chicks could benefit from that too.
 
Mine do that too, so dumb. I mean, they are really, really dumbXD. My babies that were mother raised aren't going to be good mothers...:/
 
Yup they are very noisy and dumb! BUT they do taste very good and eat the ticks. I had 17 after about 17 weeks I thinned the flock to 6 and that helped alot. I will hatch a new batch but just for meat. Winter flock will remain small due to feed costs and the noise. No bugs here from Oct to May basically and those birds eat alot of feed.
 
realtreegirl, you are one with knowing what's smart and dumb...And guineas are dumbXD, I probably lost about two in a week:/. I love the meat, yummy, not stringy like chicken meat yet tastes better then chicken. Guinea and barbecue isn't bad either...
 
Funny, I got 3 keets 3 years ago, we let them loose as soon as they were big enough to not look tempting to our farm cats. All 3 turned out to be boys, and I don't think we could chase them away if we tried. In fact one of our son's favorite games is "Chase the Guineas", full speed all over the property, they just run and screech at him. I have seen then faced off with a sharp shinned hawk as well, the 3 stooges will gang up on intruders, so they make okay watch-birds.
 
I have raised 10 keets from hatch and they are now pairing off to breed. They start of so amazingly small and fuzzy. And loud. Six weeks later they started calling and so they wouldstand outide on the patio and practice, Loud. When they wanted something they let me knwo,LOud. And finally when something was out of place ie. car, leaf, person, wind etc they would double their efforts even louder..I love my Guineas, they have a strange otherworldly beauty and despite being so big and clumsy walking, they are amazing flyers. When I go out to check on them at night they make adorable cooing noises at me like a dove. They also "talk"all night long. I think they talk in their sleep....
 
I'd have a bunch of guineas around her if I weren't fearful of them freezing to death in the winters. Will they seek shelter in open out buildings?
 
My guineas are at least nine years old, and they have had no shelter through snowstorms and rain. They haven't frozen to death or died from cold. They must be pretty stocky.
 
If you don't mind me asking, what state do you live in? I live in West Virginia and my area seems to have no tick problem but I do have a running average of 450 plus NN chickens running around here and I'm pretty certain that, while it's not their 'specieality', I doubt any of them would pass on nice fat tick.
 
I live in Southern Indiana and we got pretty cold here this winter.. our guineas survived with no problem. They did want to roost with our chickens, but during the warmer weather they prefer to roost in the trees. We are down to two out of 24 because the hens will sit on a nest hidden from us and the coyotes get them... Trying to catch a broody hen has, so far, not happened so we could move her and the nest to safer quarters..
 
Great, that is what i am going through right now I think, one of my girls didn't come home last night to go into the guinea barn with the others....Im worried to pieces about her..I am going searching tomorrow through all their hiding places but we live on 52 acres of wooded forest.
 
It's a shame but in that much territory, they aren't likely to be found unless they want to be found. On the good side, if they are nesting, they might be safe enough from predators...

Good luck getting them back...

I'm pretty well convinced to leave guineas to others, who might have fewer birds already to drive me nuts!!!
 

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