what to get?

[Akane]

For my birthday my husband's mom is buying me 18 guinea keets from the nearby hatchery http://www.guineafarm.com/descriptions.html . They have every color. I'm thinking of just doing all pieds and hope I get something interesting besides just pied pearls and purples. With our odds only about 1/3rd survive to realize that sleeping out of coop=bad. My landlord comes over to yell at me for letting the guinea fowl get eaten by the owl but I'm not climbing to the top of buildings (some of which have questionable roofs) to get guinea fowl in failing light when they'll probably just fly to a nearby tree before I grab them. I'm thinking pieds this year, see what I get, and then when we move and actually have a pen for them (the landlord complains but won't let us build a pen) get some other colors I want and mix them with the pieds. Then I'll have pied of whatever I want in the next generation. I got rid of most of my standard chickens because I'd rather have guinea fowl. They are hardier toward living in my grain bin converted coop. We bought an 8x8 building built specifically for chickens to put the bantams in. Much less frostbite and easier to build roosts and feeders than in a hexagonal building. So the guineas would nearly have the run of the 170sq ft building plus free ranging. I might fence off half of it with chicken wire to keep breeders in so I actually get eggs and hopefully keep the other guineas from wandering as far and sleeping outside.

So pied? Slates? All my slates died. Half one and half the other. I have 1 royal purple and 2 coral blues left. I just can't decide. I really like the slightly pied birds and most of the partial dotted colors. Not the real light ones.

 

[Cacklin" Hens]

i would just get regular pearls. They seem the hardiest!:

 

[Akane]

I don't want a flock of pearls. I'd rather not have guineas then. Actually I'd rather not have anything if I could only get it in one color. I spent several years in genetics classes and playing with color genetics in various animals. Color does not determine hardiness unless there is poor breeding involved, people tend to inbreed too many generations or ignore undesireable traits in order to make a recessive color show up faster, or we are talking very very diluted colors. Albino or close to it can have issues. Otherwise the only difference might be how easy predators see them. Interestingly though there was a study that proved a gerbil's coat color did have an impact on the amount of various neurotransmitters in the gerbil's brain. Meaning those stereotypes about certain colors of animals having certain personalities could have a grain of truth. Most likely though it plays such a small role that environmental factors would pretty much eliminate the difference.

Don't get me started on color genetics...

 

[Katy]

My light colored ones are always the first ones the owls pick out of the trees at night.

 

[Cacklin" Hens]

That is why i said pearls. They are harder to see. When having different colors myself, I have seen the pearls do a lot better in rain and in snow versus the colors because the colored ones are smaller than the my pearls. That is my personal opion of the best over the 13 years I have raised guineas.

 

[speckledhen]

I love, love, love the lavenders! Had three of them and a huge pearl hen. Decided I wouldnt mind an entire flock of lavs. I dont care for the ones that do not have spots or the ones that are only partially spotted, as with some of the rarer colors. Now, if you are going to let them roost in the trees, they will be picked off (mine were housed at night)