Guinea Garden Solutions Needed~ Pics & New Info Added

[okdfarms]

cadillac jill. sorry you feel that the choice is the guins over the garden. but we all must make choices. my garden: i am gung ho in april, weeding like a fool in may, getting cranky by june. and omg, august and the weeds that are cemented into the ground. well you get the picture. good intentions, green thumb, NOT.
i only have 8 guineas - yet 225 acres. the guins have their freedom over 20 acres. they could walk where they want, but they choose to stay close to home.
what do they pick on: my sorry little peas, my cucs, my zucs, my maters. and with food prices being what they are and only going higher, i have expanded my garden and my barriers. but, you know what: i would sacrifice a couple of bushels of maters, and my peas, omg, well they're gone. Just to watch the guins do their high hurdles jumps over the thistle patch, bark at me like i Am the enemy. but that's my Choice. they make me laugh, and that's something that can't be replaced in the grocery cart. they have cleared my trees of japanese beetles, the carpenters bees are non-existent. the grasshoppers are on the run but that's my choice. if i had a garden that was so picture perfect as yours, i would make the same choice as yours. hope this message comes across in the spirit that it was intended. but again, Ain't No Mountain High Enough................

 

[spiritdance]

Quote:
I must have had hoodlum guineas. The very first THING that occured to them when encountering ANY barrier was to fly over it, 3 ft. chicken wire fence, 5 ft. property line fence or my 10 ft. rock retaining wall on the west side of the house. Now my chickens wouldn't fly over it. They would just stand there clucking and staring at the guineas who were by this time perched on TOP of the wall screeching at them and calling them a bunch of losers.

Traci

Guess mine are hoodlems too. They fly quite well wherever they want to. I've even had them on top of the house! My garden and coop fences are no barrier at all to them without electric wires on top, and sometimes they soar right over them anyway.

 

[CDavis]

My experience has been the same as yours, Cadillac Jill. My guineas are free range, have an entire farm to roam, are not given kitchen scraps, and are systematically destroying my new veggie garden. I think their reputation as insectivores needs to be revised! They fly over fences, squeeze through wire/cloth barriers and have pulled out small turnips whole and decimated the leaves of the bigger ones and pecked the roots in situ. My peas are 80% destroyed and the mulch over the half-grown garlic plants was scattered for dirt baths. They are no better for gardens than chooks!

 

[Chrisnotdebourg]

Same experience as the author.
My situation:
A. Initially i got 2 adults (male female) that didn't know anything about bug eating. All day they kept close to the fence separating my neighbour s chickens. Obsessed I should say.
B. Supplemented the flock with two more (again, pair) from a local household. Those two were expert hunters, though (as I was to find out) not for colorado bug or capnodis tenebrionis - peach rootborrer -nasty creature.
C. the four of them started acting like guineas acording wi the latecomers habits.
D. They behaved as they were supposed to, ... for a while. Until they learned that under the straw mulch aroung my app. 50 fruit trees, there were (beneficial) criters, that made them act, basically like chicken. And me repairing the wholes that loose soil moisture and fungal habitat on a daily basis.
E. Thinking that i should establish a proper flock (14 members, as I have read) I hurried and purchased 10 day old keets (not knowing the headake the 4 adults will give later on, as mentioned above)
F. Raised well the 10 keets only to be left with 10 flying monsters: double the size of the other four, and ten times more troublesome: when let loose, they literraly destroy any green bush (like comfrey) they come across in 1 minute (regardless of how much or what kind of feed they ve just eaten, including fresh alfalfa tossed in the pen; again, not your grain and bug eating fowl from africa, as they are advertised), are not at all enclined to their "instinctual" bug eating, noisy and wild like hell though they know me since day two.
G. Currently i have four adults that slowly but steadly turn me into their maiden (slave cleaning up the mess), and ten useless flying monsters (unless i use them only as poop machines) with which I DO NOT KNOW what to do, since I don't want to have them put to sleep.
In conclusion,
1. Guinea fowl are variable in their behaviour; if you happen to stumble upon and educated true guinea its daily routine might change in the future given the favourable/triggering circumstances;
2 store bought keets know absolutely nothing about beeing a guinea if raised separately in the coop with grains, feed, greens (mine behave like cattle);
3. Related to the previous point, the best bet in aquiring guinea fowl would be getting young adults (eventually) confirmed to knowing something about bug eating and beeing a guinea in general.

 

[yakitori]

I use those ugly plastic fencing to cordon off areas I don’t want my birds to be in. They haven’t tried to scale it yet, i think it’s because the fence is flimsy enough that they can’t get a good footing on it like an actual fence. I found that they luke to perch on things, rather than fly directly over them. Aside from grass and clover, most of mine seem more interested in bugs than veggies, thank goodness.

 

[Sydney65]

I have found a lot lacking in info abt guineas, bc they present the bird as ready to go out of the box, no assembly required. So when something goes wrong, one has to scurry some place like here for help.
I haven't had a problem w/them eating plants or vegetables. But I didn't feed them anything from the garden. They did discover raised boxes were great for dust bathing, but that was easily resolved by putting down bird netting over boxes with young vegetation and providing a baby pool for the same.
As for the herb garden, mine is set up like..what do they call that,old english cottage? a scattered glorious mess rather than neat rows? They love to wander through it, the vegetation is well established, so they don't uproot anything. They don't mess with the comfry, do snack on the mint at times but there's plenty to share. Mine like to dust bath amongst garlic & onions, so that's what they smell like. They started doing that when we were having coon visitors at night, so I was drawn to the conclusion that they instinctively know those smells are a deterrent. They didn't damage the plants, I haven't had to do any weeding.
But despite the hard sell in those books, I do believe they're like any animal,you get what time you invest in training them. I spend a lot of time outside w/them. In the beginning, I actually carried them to the area I wanted them to go to. They know the herb forest is theirs to wander through- and this was the 1st yr. I was able to work in that area without finding ticks on myself afterwards.
I didn't give them anything from the garden the 1st yr. Infact, their only treat was millet. This yr., I've given them the waste from broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower, & celery stalks. But w/the exception of cabbage, these are not things found in my garden.
Are they perfect? No..once breeding season kicked in, I lost one of my favorite ones when she flew into a passing vehicle,and another who had made a nest in the field. My remaining female no longer gets to free range, not only for her safety, but bc the males always follow. She has the coop, the run, and the kennel I used to give them free time when they were still young. She's fine with that.
Mine were day old keets shipped from a hatchery. I can't imagine starting off with adults bc of the time required to develop a relationship w/them where you aren't seen as a predator. Mine raise a raucous when I clean or move their coop. I can only imagine the effect of taking them somewhere else to live now. I believe they'd attempt to come home.
I also have fruit trees. They do peck and scratch for bugs at the base- no damage to trees. I guess you coul put a round of hard cloth at the base to prevent holes.
But- I live in the ctry, don't have a professional lawn service, don't deny dandelions the rightvto thrive or waste my time chasing moles off of my property. We have a pooper scooper for our dogs and yeah, there's bird poop to clean as well. Those are choices we accept in order to be surrounded w/animals. I understand if you've realized it's not a price you want to pay. I home you can find someone who is willing to deal w/it and rehome your birds rather than euthenizing them for behaving as they were created to behave. Good Luck!

 

[Chrisnotdebourg]

There are solutions for keeping them out of the mulch and even certain plants, indeed, but the cost is significant and makes me feel like a fool. Money can be spent on something constructive, not backtracking poor decisions. As far as their potential destination away from my homestead - the only one I see is in the freezer, sooner or later in the new location - which for the moment i can t accept.

 

[Mixed flock enthusiast]

There are solutions for keeping them out of the mulch and even certain plants, indeed, but the cost is significant and makes me feel like a fool. Money can be spent on something constructive, not backtracking poor decisions. As far as their potential destination away from my homestead - the only one I see is in the freezer, sooner or later in the new location - which for the moment i can t accept.

I hope that you are able to come to a solution. Our guineas do a small amount of damage to my husband’s abundant gardens, but not very much. They do get blamed for everything though. Yeah, turns out it was deer eating the Jerusalem artichoke... The digging that you describe does not occur with ours. Ours dig holes for dust baths, but don’t dig foraging holes. They also leave most of our crop and garden plants alone, with the exception of ripe blueberries. My only suggestion would be some kind of fencing/hazing to keep them out of their problem areas for awhile. They may not understand that there is other food out there that they can forage. A cheap and easy fencing is plastic deer fencing, like Tractor Supply sells, folded over or cut to 3-4 feet, and push in plastic t-posts. If you haze them as well when they cross the fence, you can probably train them to respect it. Our don’t try to cross the deer fence at all. Good luck!

 

[yakitori]

I'm wondering how much the environment they're able to explore affects their attraction to our gardens. Mine for example, don't care much for my gardens. My property is surrounded by an extensive wooded area filled with deep leaf litter, My lawn is also somewhat wild, with a lot of clover and other "weeds". I find that my birds have a preference for clover and scratching around in leaf litter. Perhaps having these options account for the reason they leave my veggies and other plants alone. That said, I've only had my chicks and keets a little over two months, so there may be a dramatic change in behavior.

 

[Mixed flock enthusiast]

I'm wondering how much the environment they're able to explore affects their attraction to our gardens. Mine for example, don't care much for my gardens. My property is surrounded by an extensive wooded area filled with deep leaf litter, My lawn is also somewhat wild, with a lot of clover and other "weeds". I find that my birds have a preference for clover and scratching around in leaf litter. Perhaps having these options account for the reason they leave my veggies and other plants alone. That said, I've only had my chicks and keets a little over two months, so there may be a dramatic change in behavior.

We have lawn that is clover and Bermuda; they love that, especially the clover. We plant turnip seed on clay areas in attempt to improve our soil; they love turnip greens too. We have a decent amount of prairie (I keep calling it “pasture”, but my hubby finds that offensive...) and they like all sorts of stuff, especially grassy seed heads, insects and presumably ticks, on the prairie. They like foraging and drinking at the edge of our ponds, and one guinea hen has become skilled at frog hunting at our pond and gardens. We have huge compost pits and they like digging in those, thought they don’t dig very deep. We have some wooded areas that are somewhat sparsely wooded and they love that (ticks again, I hope, plus more seed heads). There is also an area with dense woods, and that they are reluctant to enter, though it happens occasionally, especially at the edges.