How old are your guineas? Still just little keets , I hope. If they are, do spoil and fuss over them a bit while you can. They don't much care for handling, but offering a bit of mashed hard-boiled egg or the sort of very small-seeded mixes sold for pet finches on your held-out hand and letting them make all the moves will usually entice them close and start taming them down. Eventually they'll likely get excited enough about the food for the greediest ones to jump up on your wrist during the feeding frenzy and it's a good time to start teaching them that a special call means good things to eat so that later, when they're out roaming around, they'll come when you call them. Guineas can become quite tame--my first three came straight out of the incubator and never lost their fondness for visiting with me in the living room via the French doors that opened onto the attached back deck even when they became part of a much larger flock--but it's more the relationship you'd have with a tamed wild animal rather than something domestic. Thinking of them as friendly feral pheasants rather than chicken wannabes will help a lot in how you view them and care for them. Giving them their own digs will help a lot too. They love big spaces to live in with big entrances (I used a baby barn) and very high perches, like eight or ten feet high. I wouldn't keep them with chickens myself--they're not good 'mixers' when confined. Despite all that, they're my favourite fowl. You'll never be bored with guineas around!
The tick thing is very much overrated, by the way, at least in my opinion. Any decent Leghorn or standard game chicken, the sort that go far afield when they range, will pick up just as many ticks, plus they'll scratch up even more...guineas don't scratch. However, it IS true that they can help you out with certain types of predators. For example, they're smart enough that they'll quickly learn that any family dogs are 'safe' and will normally ignore them, even if they run loose with your birds. But they hate, hate, HATE strange dogs, foxes and coyotes, and as long as the guineas are flighted, they'll often feel bold enough to approach and harass such animals, all while screaming their heads off. Two of mine once went over the fence to yell at and follow a fox that was just innocently trying to hunt mice in the weeds at the back of my neighbour's yard, and another single male likewise flew over the front fence to trail and scream at an old labrador retriever who'd gotten out of his yard and who was meandering around on the road...this last actually halted traffic on the outgoing lane for a bit since the dog was walking slowly right down the middle of the lane and then, twenty feet behind him was the screeching, darting guinea, and twenty feet behind THEM was a string of five or six cars, moving just as slowly with their occupants enjoying the show and laughing their butts off, thankfully! Anyway, guineas REALLY don't like dogs they don't know and those darn foxes and coyotes. A flock of twelve, free to fly and free to roam, should be good at alerting you to any strays that come around.
Guineas will also gather under and curse at any perching hawks, eagles, or predatory-looking ravens they see, and the ruckus they raise will usually move such birds along, at least to quieter locations. They're also good about spotting snakes and will gather around any they catch out in the open and harass them and will sometimes kill them, if they're small enough. And that's...honestly...about it when it comes to guineas helping out with predator control in my experience. Mine never did seem to spot any daytime mink or even cats detouring through my yard and they're just as helpless as chickens when it comes to nocturnal predators, alas.
Thanks a million for taking the time to answer my question.
