Awsome Results from Sexing: 8 Female / 2 Male

[hoog]

I finished my week long quest to sex my new guineas. I got them in the spring and decided it was time to sex them before egg laying season starts. So, after many scratches and lots of running around the coop I got them all sexed. At first I thought I had four males six females but then two of the males started their buck-wheat call to the females. I had to cut off and replace the bands around their legs but I was happy.


Total count 2 males and 8 females! Happily, I'll have lots eggs to hatch!

 

[perchie.girl]

congrats I know it can be an exercise in aerobics to catch em...

 

[dentech]

I could be wrong...isn't it the hens that make the "buck-wheat" call?

 

[perchie.girl]

Yep thats why the OP realized he had put hens in with the boys and had to re band them. At least thats what I read....

deb

I could be wrong...isn't it the hens that make the "buck-wheat" call?

 

[PeepsCA]

Congrats Hoog, that's a pretty good ratio

More than likely all the Hens will be covered (if you are keeping all if them that is).
I have had Males suddenly decide to "morph" into Hens before too, lol... dang Hens like to hold out on ya !

 

[hoog]

Yeah PeepsCA, the whole process wore me out and I am covered in scratches on my arms and face. I now know the Guineas are much more “wild” than chickens.
They are so difficult to mange.

Well worth the effort though, I am quite happy with the results.






To clarify: yes I thought the two of the girls were boys and banded them as such but then they started the buck-wheat sound

so I knew they were girls and I had to relabel

those two.

 

[Guinea and Chicken raiser]

congrats. maybe I can order like 10-15 female guineas from you and one or two males... how many male-female ratio you think it's best? I had one male and three female but now just one female who hangs around chickens.

 

[PeepsCA]

congrats. maybe I can order like 10-15 female guineas from you and one or two males... how many male-female ratio you think it's best? I had one male and three female but now just one female who hangs around chickens.

If you were posting that to me about ordering Guinea Hens... I can't legally ship eggs, keets or adult Guineas out of CA. My flocks aren't NPIP certified, sorry. Wish I could tho, I've had a lot of requests for keets and eggs. It's just next to impossible for me to get all of my flocks certified and keep them all certified... the cost alone for all the testing required is just not worth it to me, not to mention the hassle (catching and testing 100+ birds, more than once!). I know a lot of people ship eggs and keets and adults regardless of the laws, but I won't, lol. I'd love to be able to share my pretties all across the US tho

The best male to female ratio depends on a lot of different factors... the coop/pen set-up, your poultry routine, how much free range time the flock gets, the flock dynamics like the pecking order and aggression level and the individual personalities of the birds, etc... so really there is no one magic number to throw out there that will work for everyone. For the best egg fertility I personally like a 50/50 ratio, or a few more males than Hens so that all the Hens are for sure covered (That's just my personal pref tho). But there's going to be extra aggression that comes along with all those males. If you want a more peaceful flock and aren't concerned about egg fertility... then I'd go with less males/more Hens, or no Hens at all if you don't care about keets and you don't even want eggs for consumption. (Some people want flocks of all males, strictly as watchdogs and bug/pest control). I don't think you'd get that many fertile eggs with just a couple males and 10-15 Hens, but you can never say never when it comes to Guineas. Supposedly a male can or will cover 4-5 Hens (especially in a breeding pen set-up), but in my flocks sometimes they will choose one Hen and stick with just one Hen.

 

[WestKnollAmy]

So how did you get them to tell you who was who? Did you take them out and put them in a separate pen until you could tell by the call?

I have a pen of 14 that I would like for breeding but am having a hard time telling how many males and females I have. I know several of my lavenders are females and my one buff dundotte has made the girl call but the others are horribly silent except to do their machine gun fussy noise. I want to band them but haven't a clue how to grab and tag the correct ones. Well, I know I can catch with the net but how do I tell after I catch them who is a boy and who is a girl?

 

[PeepsCA]

This is my method, and it rarely fails me...
I'll catch a few birds at a time that I can tell apart by either their color or markings... (I usually catch them by herding some into my catch cage/wire crate that I have strategically shoved into a corner and use it kind of like a cattle loading shoot so that they have about 12 inches of space between the pen or coop wall and the crate, with nowhere to go but in the crate door, lol. They are like cattle, they move in a herd and will usually follow each other). Then I move the cage/crate out of site but within earshot of the rest of the flock... and then I kick back in a chair and watch them from a distance while I wait for their separation anxiety to kick in, lol. That's when the Hens start calling to the rest of the flock. Just catching one birds at a time works too... but if I'm in a hurry and I have 20 birds to sex for a sale I'll usually catch several at a time. But not too many at once tho, that keeps them quiet because they are comfortable/content with the company they have and don't call to the others, lol. If I have a bunch of the same color then I'll temporarily use different colors of masking tape on their legs so I can tell them apart while they are in the cage. Then when the Hens starts singing I check the tape color, go grab her, pull the tape off and put a colored band or ziptie on her leg, put her back in the pen, or in another holding cage if I have someone coming to buy them. The ones that don't buck-wheat get banded as "assumed" males (but they could still possibly be Hens that are just holding out on me, lol). Sometimes I'll know by their behavior or posture that they are for sure males. I'm in and out of and around the pens so much that when I hear buck-wheating I'll double check to see if it's a Hen that I've already ID'd/banded, or one that I thought was a male. If it turns out that one's a Hen I keep a squirt bottle of plain water handy right at the pen and I'll go in, give that bird's back a few squirts so I know which one I'm trying to catch then drag in my catch cage/wire crate into the pen, herd that one in, then re-band it.

Pain in the rear... and I sometimes get pecked and scratched a lot in the process of all the handling, but it gets the job done, lol.