Do Guinea Fowls Raise Their Tails When Mating

[toptom]

I wonder if guinea fowls raise their tails when mating like chickens.
I noticed that my silkie roo tried to mount my guinea hen a while ago. I don't know if mating was successful cause I didn't see my guinea hen raised her tails. It's like their tail feathers are always down.

 

[chooks4life]

The tail doesn't need to be raised, the feathers need to be moved out of the way which can be done sideways as well.

The best indicator of fertility is candling the eggs to see if they're developing, generally.

Best wishes.

 

[toptom]

The tail doesn't need to be raised, the feathers need to be moved out of the way which can be done sideways as well.

The best indicator of fertility is candling the eggs to see if they're developing, generally.

Best wishes.

thanks for the reply. is it true that they are monogamous? what if a guinea cock died, will his hen accept another partner?

 

[R2elk]

thanks for the reply. is it true that they are monogamous? what if a guinea cock died, will his hen accept another partner?

In my opinion guineas are not monogamous. There may be some evidence to support the claim that guinea hens prefer one mate. There is lots of proof that guinea males do not have any problem having multiple mates,

If a guinea hen loses her mate, I have proof that she will choose another mate if one is available.

My guinea hens chose mates that I did not approve of this spring. I removed those males (they were delicious) and within a week the hens chose new mates that I did approve of.

Good luck

 

[chooks4life]

thanks for the reply. is it true that they are monogamous? what if a guinea cock died, will his hen accept another partner?

I don't know what their wild social structure is, but if it's monogamous then there will be some domestic monogamous guinea fowl too. Most guinea fowl I've seen are not monogamous though.

I know with my chickens, there are monogamous males and females, who may never pick another mate if their first one dies, polyamorous ones who will never pick a permanent mate, polyandrous hens who pick multiple 'husbands', polygamous roos who pick multiple 'wives', and every other sort of sexual partnership including homosexuals, and even some celibate chickens who prefer to not have any mates. Most are polyamorous.

My guinea hens chose mates that I did not approve of this spring. I removed those males (they were delicious) and within a week the hens chose new mates that I did approve of.

Good luck

I used to do the same, but have since found that the girls were right in their mate selections. As long as you're not keeping any truly unworthy males, it may be a good experiment to let them pick their own mates.

I now do so as a rule because I've found that the offspring they produce when allowed to pick their own mates far surpass, as a rule, the offspring produced when I've chosen their mates for them. There's a lot of scientific evidence supporting the importance of female mate selection and I've found that in most cases they really are onto something when they pick their mates.

Best wishes.

 

[toptom]

Thanks for the input! Do they need to be wormed?

 

[chooks4life]

Yes, generally all animals need to either be wormed or be enabled to access the right things to worm themselves. For example via garlic and other antiparasite plants being available. Wild animals rarely have parasite problems for a few reasons but when they do get parasites they have the instincts to know what to do to fix it... But for that to work with domestics, they need to re-learn to use the right plants as the ancestral instincts are often weakened due to lack of being able to act on them for many thousands of generations. In the meantime you'd have to take control of that.

I've not done much research on guineas and don't know what wild guinea fowl use to control their parasites but it's probably a moot point as they are far removed from Africa and the plants they used there are likely not present here.

This site that I've linked to below has heaps of useful links for, and by, guinea owners. I only kept some a short time before rehoming them as they were more interested (even as babies) in disemboweling my other poultry, particularly baby turkeys, than they were in eating ticks etc. There's lots of people on this site who keep guineas as well.

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Best wishes.

 

[toptom]

Thanks for the link. Do you free range your guinea fowls? I wonder at what age can I start to free range mine wherein they won't go away and are generally safe from predators. Our main predators here are rats and monitor lizards.

 

[chooks4life]

Toptom are you Aussie? It helps if you state what country you're from because a lot of advice and info is very country specific, whether talking about feeds or breeds or diseases or parasites or regulations or so many other things. I'm Aussie as my profile states and my experience with monitors is that they never harmed a single chook but would sit in the cage eating eggs while chooks ran over the top of them. To put this in perspective some of these lizards were so large they weighed almost as much as me and it took several strong adults to remove them. I'm not a small person. Not huge, but certainly not diminutive. The chooks were cornered but the lizards couldn't have cared less. But, that said, monitors live in several countries and there's a few species and my experiences may not be relevant to you, depending on where you live.

About free ranging them, yes, I did. They ended up caged because they were so intent on killing my other livestock. They were certainly not short of protein, they were close to excessively supplemented there, what with high protein feed and then on top of that ad-lib fresh live insects many times daily... They free ranged in our gardens to begin with. These keets (weepoos we called them because that's what they said nonstop, 'wee-poo!') would attack baby turkeys the same size as themselves by grabbing onto a wing, flipping the chick onto its back, and diving in for the guts. For some reason our first geese also wanted to eat the baby turkeys, and they weren't short on protein either, they were fishing for large fish in the dam as well as being supplemented via our handmixed feed.

I found the guineas so much trouble I got rid of them before they hit puberty. Next time I try, I will get some from a backyard breeder, not a produce store, I've only ever brought home bad news from those places.

Best wishes.

 

[toptom]

No I'm not. I am a Filipino. From my experience, monitor lizards would not attack mature chickens and guinea fowls but would just eat eggs. They generally hunt for food near their holes. I have no idea if they would eat the smaller ones like a month old keet or chick.

I have no problem keeping keets and chicks together so far. As for adults, I noticed that a guinea hen blends well with the chicken flocks. Guinea cocks would attack anyone even humans, mine was bitten and killed by a dog. No serious problem with them except their noise, forces me to wake up early and probably our neighbors as well. They stroll on a wide scale and sometimes they don't seem to know how to come back.