Can Guinea fowl live alone on the wild?

I have lost one of my guinea in the wild and I have been unsuccessful spending many of time to look for him. I wonder if the guinea can survive alone in the wild, please help. Thank you.

Ledba said:

I have lost one of my guinea in the wild and I have been unsuccessful spending many of time to look for him. I wonder if the guinea can survive alone in the wild, please help. Thank you.

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Guineas are by their very nature wild birds. They are only semi-domesticated. Under ideal conditions or in their native land, guineas can and do survive in the wild. A lone guinea will not survive. They are by nature a flock bird and will seek others of their own kind. I don't know where you are located and so do not know if your guinea was possibly laying eggs in a hidden nest and has now started setting on that nest. That is about the only kind of situation where the guinea would not be going around hollering, trying to find other guineas.

The other situation is that a predator got your missing guinea. Where I live, guineas that are allowed out over night have a very short life span as the great horned owls think they are delicious.

I wish you good luck in your search for your guinea. If you know of any other guineas in your locality, you may want to check with their owners to see if your missing guinea has shown up.

Thank you so much for the information. As you said, it is a flock bird so I think it should be death by now! Now I only have two left, one male and on female. However, I also heard that Guinea is monogamy and the female is loyal with her mate. I experienced that the female has been looking for her mate after many days of missing. I don't know if the female will accept a new mate soon. I raised them from baby, they roost in the coop to start with and now they fly to the tree spending their nights. I am living in outskirt of Austin Texas and have seen owl in my area, but my guinea are safe when growing up. The missing guinea was flying away to the forest when I allowed my nephew have him for a weekend.

Ledba said:

Thank you so much for the information. As you said, it is a flock bird so I think it should be death by now! Now I only have two left, one male and on female. However, I also heard that Guinea is monogamy and the female is loyal with her mate. I raised them from baby, they roost in the coop to start with and now they fly to the tree spending their nights. I am living in outskirt of Austin Texas and have seen owl in my area, but my guinea are safe when growing.

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Guinea fowl are not monogamous, they will mate with any available bird of the opposite sex, and even a brooding hen will sit on eggs that are not her own.

As far as surviving, you mentioned you are near Austin, TX. The main thing that determines survivability are the temperature and predators. They can take temps below freezing but long term they can not survive the low temps if they are in wet or windy conditions with no protection from the elements. They are very good at avoiding predators during the day, at night if it can roost in a safe place and get lucky it will be fine as well. You mentioned an owl in the area, I'm a falconer and owls are legal to hunt with so I know a little about this, while all predators are very opportunistic and would not pass up an easy meal, it is not normal for owls to take other birds as prey. They feed on mammals, it is even hard to train an owl to select birds as prey items so I wouldn't worry too much, unless there is a Hawaiian owl in the area, they evolved on the Hawaiian islands before humans brought rats and other small mammals so they hunt birds during the day!

Also, as R2elk mentioned, these are semi wild birds which gives them a better chance, but they are not truly wild. They have had a lot of the instincts bred out of them. You can not go to Africa and find a domestic guinea fowl in the wild any more then you could find a domestic sheep or goat in the wild. When the Europeans first imported guinea fowl into Europe they didn't realize or didn't care that there are 5 separate subspecies of helmeted guineas, Numida meleagris, so they didn't separate them and what we have as domestic guineas are a mix of at least 3 of the 5. Along with that they were domesticated thousands of generations ago and the wildness has been tempered in that time.

I wish you luck in finding him, it is the end of winter so the weather will hopefully not be too bad, he wants to be in his flock and he has enough instincts to avoid many predators, so hopefully he will show up if he gets lonely.

Thank you so much for the informative post. You are so knowledgeable about this matter and it is very helpful to the members.

It is saturday and it is light raining in my area, outskirt of west Austin Texas, I have lost my first guinea and there were two left until this morning! When I came out of the house i did not see them come to me as usual for breakfast. There was only a guinea hen keeps calling sadly. I came to the garden, under the oak that they roost and found a lot of feather and I tried to trace around but found nothing, no blood. I am a first time raising chicken and guinea and I really love them all. The chicken do go to the coop every night but the guinea started roost on the tree when they became adult. Please help me to find out what was the problem to my guinea and please help if I can train them to stay on the coop when I buy the next flock of guinea.

I do appreciate for your help.

Ledba said:

It is saturday and it is light raining in my area, outskirt of west Austin Texas, I have lost my first guinea and there were two left until this morning! When I came out of the house i did not see them come to me as usual for breakfast. There was only a guinea hen keeps calling sadly. I came to the garden, under the oak that they roost and found a lot of feather and I tried to trace around but found nothing, no blood. I am a first time raising chicken and guinea and I really love them all. The chicken do go to the coop every night but the guinea started roost on the tree when they became adult. Please help me to find out what was the problem to my guinea and please help if I can train them to stay on the coop when I buy the next flock of guinea.

I do appreciate for your help.

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It is my opinion that an owl dined on your latest missing guinea. The owl will keep coming back until it gets the other guinea also if you continue to allow it to roost in the tree.

You should read the Raising Guinea Fowl 101 thread from the start and pay particular to posts made by PeepsCA. There probably isn't very much that you want to know about guineas that isn't covered in that thread.

Yes you can train guineas to roost in the coop at night but you have to start at a young age and you must be persistent. I lost an entire flock of guineas to great horned owls because I did not realize the owls were getting them. I do not allow my current flock of guineas to roost anywhere except in their coop and have not lost any of this flock. I do have to herd the guineas in every evening before it gets dark.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/312682/raising-guinea-fowl-101

I live in a very small town and a few years ago a small flock of guineas showed up and just roamed around. I throw our scratch feed and bird seed and bread for them. At one point they had 14 babies but only one survived and then it disappeared too. I think the male in the flock must have died because the following year there were no babies. For a long time There were 3 guineas always together. Now there is only one left and I feel so sorry for her. What can I do to help? Should I try to find someone who sells guineas and turn a few loose so she can have some company?

Oh that is so sad! I can't give any good advice as I am also quite new to this, but I hope someone else can advise. I have one female guinea that is always on her own, but i think that might be because she thinks she is a human, as she is hand reared.
From what I gather guineas are dlock birds, so need company

*flock