Raising Guinea Fowl 101

[MIChickandGuinea]

I agree with perchiegirl....they will easily fly up and out of the pen at their age and may end up roosting in your trees. If they roost outside at night, be prepared to lose some to predators like raccoon and owls....anything that can climb or fly at night is a serious threat as guineas are completely useless after dark!
Hopefully your guineas will be great for your garden. Mine would always move through my garden and pick off bugs and pests and never touch any of the plants. The worst thing they did was make a nest and lay eggs in my butternut squash. ( I tried to convince them to lay eggs in the potatoes to make it easier to gather breakfast, but they would't cooperate! )
As for isolating them in a new location to learn their new home, I would say at least 3 weeks and some people do 5-6 weeks. If you start them early with a treat and some sort of a call or sound with the treats, they will learn quickly to come into a coop when they hear it. Mine would come running from quite far off when they would hear a bag of millet and a "chick-chick-chick" call.
I also agree that they mellow with age. I noticed that my older guineas made a lot less noise and and created far less chaos than the younger ones.
I recently had to rehome my guineas because of a move and I really miss them a lot! I hope you enjoy yours as much as i enjoyed mine!

I hope they're fun - lots of people have told me how much they've enjoyed watching their flock of silly guineas ... Given how much I enjoy our chickens, I anticipate I will like these goofball guineas also. I will try to put your training tips into practice to try to get them trained to come in to their coop. Here's hoping. I guess my next task is to put up a temporary covered fenced area in the garden, around their crate coop, so that they can start getting the hang of their new home :-D

 

[R2elk]

2) Will they be good citizens of the vegetable garden, or agents of destruction?

This mainly depends on you and how you raised them. Guineas develop their preferred tastes at an early age. If you feed them treats from the garden, they will remember those treats and help themselves to them if allowed to roam your garden.

To raise keets to be able to patrol your garden for pests, never feed them treats from the garden.

Guineas will not plow up a garden like chickens will but they will still dig holes for their dust baths and for nests.

 

[MIChickandGuinea]

This mainly depends on you and how you raised them. Guineas develop their preferred tastes at an early age. If you feed them treats from the garden, they will remember those treats and help themselves to them if allowed to roam your garden.

To raise keets to be able to patrol your garden for pests, never feed them treats from the garden.

Guineas will not plow up a garden like chickens will but they will still dig holes for their dust baths and for nests.

So keep their treats to things like meal worms, grains, etc.? What about fruits - we don't grow any fruits.

 

[perchie.girl]

So keep their treats to things like meal worms, grains, etc.? What about fruits - we don't grow any fruits.

While guineas are omniverous they prefer bugs and what ever critters they can catch... Id keep it to grains and meal worms.

White millet is like crack to them LOL. I used to supplement with Catfish chow because my guineas werent allowed to free range.
Chickens like it too.

deb

 

[MIChickandGuinea]

While guineas are omniverous they prefer bugs and what ever critters they can catch... Id keep it to grains and meal worms.

White millet is like crack to them LOL. I used to supplement with Catfish chow because my guineas werent allowed to free range.
Chickens like it too.

deb

You know what? You guys are great. It's so helpful to have seasoned bird keepers to give me the real-world skinny on getting The Freaks started successfully. Thanks for all this timely input.

 

[MIChickandGuinea]

OK! I have moved The Freaks down to a new fenced, covered area in the garden. They are thrilled with all their new space to flap and fly, graze, and explore! Oddly, they are suddenly MUCH friendlier to humans. Where before, they would only come over if they could see a treat in my hand, now they come over just to see what's up when a person walks up to the garden fence.

 

[perchie.girl]

yay

 

[Diannastarr]

I LOVE my guineas very smart birds they see me as moma bird and they fit in well with my 75 chickens of several different breeds SLW CW RIR RIW NHR BR Delawares but mostly australorps, after their first year i let them out to free range with all the rest of my flock so now my guineas sleep hi up in the big shade tree by my front porch every night , they come running to me when they first see me every morning and they come to me if they are asking for treats, its so cute they are now 2 years old , after they were 6 months old i made them a giant grow out pen for the 8 of them its about 18 foot hi with wire over the top and 35x 35 with their own tree and a few step ladders to play & sleep on , so they were safe in there , so that is the place they took their babies to keep them safe and i locked them all in when one day they all went back into their giant grow out pen after appearing with 6 chicks in the spring , tiny little chicks & the mommy made a dirt hole nest for them & every night she would gather them all up and keep them warm all night long in her earth nest , guineas are wonderful birds & fun to be around they like me calling them my pretty babies , but during their teenage stage they had started to fly off , but i could call them back & now by age 2 they have stopped leaving and pretty much stay on my land and if the don't they are usually yelling loudly at my front gates to come let them in HA my land is chain linked fenced so they all are safe here, plus we have wild cats that also hang out with all my animals but the cats understand none of my flock are to be harmed, so every one gets along well mostly they all can be found sleeping in the shade together wild cats included and thanks to the wild cats i have not seen a mouse around here in a year HA, i will try to post a few pics if i can of every one hanging out together.

 

[duluthralphie]

60 days guinea free, life has never been better.

 

[perchie.girl]

60 days guinea free, life has never been better.

Twelve step program Ralphie?