Chickens and guinea together?

[Heathenfeather]

I'm getting chickens and guinea in a couple days. Does anyone have experience with having them together as babies? Should I separate them since guinea are supposed to have different food? Any experiences shared would be appreciated. Thank you!

 

[CascadiaRiver]

If they need different diets I would separate

 

[R2elk]

I'm getting chickens and guinea in a couple days. Does anyone have experience with having them together as babies? Should I separate them since guinea are supposed to have different food? Any experiences shared would be appreciated. Thank you!

You will find a lot of information on this in the Guinea Fowl forum.

I do not recommend brooding keets and chicks together because of the problems the imprinting causes. Everything can seem fine until the first breeding season happens.

Guineas have different instincts than any other poultry. They are flock birds and do best in large groups of guineas. Chicken imprinted guineas will not be able to understand that there is a difference between chickens and guineas. They will treat chickens the same as they will treat each other. The chickens will not understand the races and chases along with the attacks from behind with the feather pulling and feather breaking. It can cause great stress to the chickens.

Getting a few guineas will not give the claimed benefits of having guineas since most of those perceived benefits are due to having a flock along with the proper flock dynamics which cannot happen with just a couple of guineas.

 

[SamLockwood]

It's doable depending on the exact breed, but it is more complicated than mixing other kinds of poultry and you need a LOT of space and more than one coop.

I have jumbo French Pearls that I've raised with chickens (I fact I've got six new ones being raised BY the chickens) and they get along decently. And by decently I mean the guineas don't treat the chickens any worse than they treat each oher: Guineas don't have any sort of subtlety when it comes to enforcing the pecking order.

However even if it goes well that first spring is a doozy. If you think young roosters are a handful they have nothing on the chasing / head butting / feather breaking antics of male guineas in breeding season. Even out of early spring they tend to behave more like a tiny feathered biker gang than poultry: they tend to stay is a group and there's a lot of swagger.

My chickens are used to them, but when I integrate new birds into the flock the guineas tend to scare the hell out of them: guineas don't like strangers, even other guineas. The only exception I've seen is when I let the broody hens raise chicks or keets: then the guinea's hazing is at a minimum.

You also may have trouble if you have any roosters. Guineas don't like certain rooster habits like mating in public or fighting out of season . I've seen guineas discipline roosters they think are out of line, and if a rooster picks a fight with a guinea he'll find out the hard way guineas tend to fight in packs.