Is there a conflict?

[DoublePrincess]

Yeah, they are not only very loud but will yell almost constantly all day, unlike roosters.

All day. Wow. I’ll have to talk to my husband about that to see if I can get him to change his mind about getting guineas.

 

[DoublePrincess]

Read the thread Raising Guinea Fowl 101 and pay particular attention to posts made by @PeepsCA.

Guinea fowl are flock birds and do best in large groups. No, chickens do not satisfy their need to be with other guineas. Guineas have entirely different instincts than any other poultry.

I brooded my keets only with keets. I raised them only with guineas and housed the only with other guineas. I could let the guineas, chickens and turkeys all free range in the same area at the same time. Each group would keep to their own kind and leave the other poultry alone.

Ok. Thank you.

 

[DoublePrincess]

Read the thread Raising Guinea Fowl 101 and pay particular attention to posts made by @PeepsCA.

Guinea fowl are flock birds and do best in large groups. No, chickens do not satisfy their need to be with other guineas. Guineas have entirely different instincts than any other poultry.

I brooded my keets only with keets. I raised them only with guineas and housed the only with other guineas. I could let the guineas, chickens and turkeys all free range in the same area at the same time. Each group would keep to their own kind and leave the other poultry alone.

That’s a lot of good information. Thanks

 

[SamLockwood]

My husband wants guineas and I want chickens. Do they get also? Can you keep them in the same coop? Or do they conflict/fight each others?

The short answer is: "it's complicated."

I've had a mixed flock for a little over 2 years and I did a lot of research before ordering them. Overall they get along OK with the chickens, and most of them grew up together. However, it's tempered by the following:

• I free-range my flock pretty much every day all day.
• They have about 5 fenced in acres of mostly woodland to forage in.
• I have two 4x8' coops with a 8'x12' fully enclosed run (including a roof) for them to sleep in. There's over 70' of roosting bars in there.
• When I picked my chickens I picked active but more docile breeds (most of them are olive eggers or cream legbars, except two of the roos are marans).
• The guineas are the larger French Pearl variety.

I started out with 34 birds: 15 straight-run guineas, 15 female chicks, and 4 aging hens from my mom's old flock. Right now I've got a total of 12 guineas left, and 23 chickens (3 roosters, 19 hens, and one old biddy made it), so 35 total (19 are from the original batch two years ago).

Some general notes of what I've observed about guineas relative either to prevailing attitudes here or the various articles online:

• Guineas are flock-oriented & are happier in larger groups: at least 5 if not 10 or more.
• Guineas are semi-feral and take significant extra work to train to do things like stay in a coop at night or come home when free-ranging.
• Guineas are more night-blind than chickens. If your coop is too dark at dusk they may not decide to enter it and prefer to sleep outside. I painted my coops bright colors (pretty much white) inside and out and I have motion-controlled lights to help them find their way.
• Guineas like to wander during the day more than chickens. If you don't have a fence to keep them in, they may wander quite far away indeed: your neighbor's yards, their neighbor's yards, or a nearby highway.
• If you get freaked out by normal chicken pecking-order behaviors, guineas will give you a panic attack. They're more violence prone than chickens. Most of the times the fights only end in feather pulling and chasing, but even that's too much for a lot of poultry-keepers.
• How they treat your chickens depends on a variety of factors. Mine don't seem to treat the chickens any worse than they treat each other, and the chickens mostly stay out of their way.
• If you raise your chickens & guineas together (as I did mine), they'll get along great until that first spring, then the guineas mating instincts kick in. This will stress your chickens out until they figure out how to deal with it. If you have limited space or high-strung chickens this will be a recipe for disaster.
• Guineas have very different mating habits than chickens. They prefer to be monogamous for the mating season, and they're more discrete about it.
• If you have a rooster that's too sexually aggressive, this will mean trouble for him. When I introduced the cockerels last spring, the guinea males would attack them if they tried to mount an unwilling hen. If a rooster tries for a male guinea's mate he'll be in for a beating.
• How noisy guineas are depends on timing and situation. They're loudest when they're younger, when they're threatened, and in spring when the females call constantly for mates. On a typical day my roosters make more noise.
• Some people get them to eat ticks. I can't attest to how good they are at this as I don't have a tick problem on the property, but they definitely eat a wider variety of insects than chickens and cover more ground in a day.
• Some people get guineas as a flock guardian. My experience is they won't go out of their way to help non-guineas but that territorial instinct means they'll try to chase of virtually anything: I've seen mine accost crows, rabbits, hawks, coyotes, deer, a neighbor's dog, and people. I've seen mine use pack tactics against hawks that tried to attack them.

I'll be happy to expand on any of those topics if you're interested.

 

[Gill-b]

A good, thoughtful, well layed out, and well worded explanation @SamLockwood

 

[Debbie292d]

And be warned that guineafowl are extremely loud, tend to wander, and are very stupid.

We don't have them, but the farmer across the road does. Yes, loud, yes, wander as one comes over here, and yes....coming from someone who raises silkies, guineas are worse when it comes to stupidity!

 

[R2elk]

We don't have them, but the farmer across the road does. Yes, loud, yes, wander as one comes over here, and yes....coming from someone who raises silkies, guineas are worse when it comes to stupidity!

Having different natural instincts does not equate to stupidity.

 

[StinkyAcres]

Having different natural instincts does not equate to stupidity.

Stupid is the only way I can describe a prey animal that runs into a predator's mouth. I've always thought they must feed a lot of predators in the wild.

 

[SamLockwood]

Stupid is the only way I can describe a prey animal that runs into a predator's mouth. I've always thought they must feed a lot of predators in the wild.

They're native to to North Africa and their instincts are geared for what's there. Mine are winning the "not being eaten by a predator" contest with my chickens: 3:7 so far.

I've seen my guineas use pack tactics to drive off hawks. I've also noticed they've learned the distress sounds of my chickens and the "goon squad" often shows up if the chickens sound like the they're in trouble. They'eve even backed up my roosters when they go into protector mode.

When they were facing off with a coyote that was trying to get through the fence, I didn't stand by idly and watch them get killed (which is pretty stupid if you ask me). I got one of my shotguns and started shooting.

Didn't kill the bastard (those things are FAST) but the guineas cleared out into cover while the gun-play was going on. They walked up to me when the shooting was done and when I got done with the head count I made the herding gesture I trained them to respond to and they silently filed back towards their coop.

That was the second time they flushed out a predator and kept their cool when the shooting started.

Other times I've went to deal with predators and had a couple of my guineas act as backup: they'd get into formation with me, one on either side, and start screaming their heads off.

Yeah, sometimes they'll jump at something they have no hope of handling. But guineas are hard-wired to preserve their flock at all costs. It's not stupid, it's selfless.

Honestly, I've had dogs that weren't as good at guarding my property as guineas. Fun fact: in the middle ages they used to stock castle moats with geese to act as watch-animals for the castle. I think the only reason they used geese is because guinea fowl HATE getting wet.

 

[R2elk]

Stupid is the only way I can describe a prey animal that runs into a predator's mouth. I've always thought they must feed a lot of predators in the wild.

As a flock they will run directly at predators. It still has nothing to do with intelligence. It has to do with their natural instincts to protect the flock.

They learn and can be trained which are signs of intelligence.