Need some help understanding Guinea Fowl

[LehighCounty4-H]

so i recently got a pair of guinea fowl, and i have a few questions.
When do they start laying eggs?
Do the female guineas lay on there own eggs once layed and hatch them out or do i need an incubator to hatch them out?
i have chickens and pheasants all in the same run. is it a possibility to get a hybrid if one of the males (2 roosters, 3 male pheasants) bred with the female guinea?
Thanks in advance

 

[R2elk]

so i recently got a pair of guinea fowl, and i have a few questions.
When do they start laying eggs?
Do the female guineas lay on there own eggs once layed and hatch them out or do i need an incubator to hatch them out?
i have chickens and pheasants all in the same run. is it a possibility to get a hybrid if one of the males (2 roosters, 3 male pheasants) bred with the female guinea?
Thanks in advance

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

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/312682/raising-guinea-fowl-101

If you do a search you will find threads about chicken guinea crosses and chicken pheasant crosses. I do not recall any threads about pheasant guinea crosses.

 

[LehighCounty4-H]

that helped a little need more information though

 

[GuineaFowling]

I don't know about hybrids as they most likely would not live long. My Guineas start laying at 18 months which I read is normal but I here some people have Guineas that lay earlier. If your Guinea pair is bonded you'll most likely not be able to get hybrids since Guineas are monogamous. Meaning they mate for life with the same mate, unless he dies.

 

[R2elk]

I don't know about hybrids as they most likely would not live long. My Guineas start laying at 18 months which I read is normal but I here some people have Guineas that lay earlier. If your Guinea pair is bonded you'll most likely not be able to get hybrids since Guineas are monogamous. Meaning they mate for life with the same mate, unless he dies.

I can guarantee you that guineas are not monogamous.

 

[GuineaFowling]

Guineas are actually monogamous. My flock has bonded pairs within it and none of the
pairs have split and taken new mates. Of course there are exceptions. Before I got my first Guineas I read from several different sites that they were monogamous so I made sure to have an equal male to female ratio. If you have more females a male will take two and sometimes three females and then even then the cock has his 'favorite' to whom he devotes more attention. I observed this myself in a friends flock of unequal male to female ratio. I started off with two, they are my oldest pair and if split up the male goes crazy and screams until he finds her. So with only two as is in the OPs case they will be closely bonded unless kept separate.

 

[R2elk]

Guineas are actually monogamous. My flock has bonded pairs within it and none of the
pairs have split and taken new mates. Of course there are exceptions. Before I got my first Guineas I read from several different sites that they were monogamous so I made sure to have an equal male to female ratio. If you have more females a male will take two and sometimes three females and then even then the cock has his 'favorite' to whom he devotes more attention. I observed this myself in a friends flock of unequal male to female ratio. I started off with two, they are my oldest pair and if split up the male goes crazy and screams until he finds her. So with only two as is in the OPs case they will be closely bonded unless kept separate.

I will agree that some hens can act monogamous and if you have a male that seems so, that is the exception and not the rule. With equal numbers of males and females, I have watched males breed other hens than their mate and have seen dominant males take multiple hens leaving non-dominant males without a mate.

In the spring the females appear to choose their mates but later on dominant males will take other hens away from their chosen mate.

 

[ludwing]

Adding on that, guineafowls begin to lay from 7 to 10 months old (normal).they do hatch their own keets if allowed and some of them do make good parents.hybrids of guineas with chickens or other fowl happen at certain times. If guineas &chickens or pheasant s were raised together from younglings the is a possibility that they can mate especially if the are no male guineas.
guineafowls are monogamous, pairs bond for life but although polygamy has been reported. wild guineafowls are generally monogamous paring for life than domesticated guineas.
I have 7 guineas,4 hens and 3 males
from their first breeding the flock began' to split the alfa male take two girls and bond with them. but 2rd hen was left alone after the 1st hen began to lay.
The lonely hen spent her time with chickens and ducks, when 1st hen went broody her mate guard her, I've seen him coming one day, the lonely hen begin to buck-wheat, he begin to display dropping and catching food in fron of her but they never bond. so I decided to brought her a mate, I brought a male that was 2 year older than her, it took them sometime to bond as the Alfa male was jelouś, the new male was slightly older than my guineas and more bigger than them.I've noticed that in guineas the male's must fight and win so to be selected by hens...then from the, the pair never split or add even thought the are still now extra hens in my flock

So I can say guineas are monogamous and polygamous although often rare.

 

[NBKOC64]

Our guineas change mates all the time. We get a totally different mix of babies at the beginning of the season than we do at the end. Adults do tend to form cliques, but often times they change mates mid-season. The males are constantly challenging each other for dominance. To the winners go the spoils, I guess.

 

[GuineaFowling]

I think it might have to do with how domestic the Guineas are. Since the 'domestic' helmeted variety is made up of a few helmeted wild varieties could it be that some are more of the Earlier generation Guineas and those are the more monogamous ones while others are the later generations that have bred out monogamy? or it might be that some Guineas were bred to keep the monagamy trait in while others were bred out.