Why are guineas so underrated as loving pets?

[prepperchickens]

My 1 month old guinea keets far outshine their chicken flockmates in terms of how tame, playful, curious, and affectionate they are. I take my birds out for a 2 hour supervised free range everyday in the yard and my guineas act like puppy dogs chasing me around and sticking to me like glue, my chickens kinda do their own thing. My guineas love to be pet and held, my chicks (all are the same age) simply put up with it. Just a minute ago one of my guineas flew into my lap, got comfy and took a power nap! Why aren't guineas known for their sweet personalities ? I've never had birds who act so much like dogs!

 

[red horse ranch]

You must be a very good mom! It takes a lot of time to tame them the way you have but it can be done.
Some of my very first males became pretty tame and they are still easy to handle. But guineas each have their own personality and most of them just think humans are scary.

Congratulations on doing a good job with them.

 

[cajunfowl0]

Guineas are extremely hard to tame compared to chickens. You must spend a lot of time with yours. Mine are so crazy the busted a whole in my wire bcus they were to stupid to just fly over like they normally do lol. I find it helps if I put a gosling with my keets since gosling are almost always tame as babies. I'll be having guineas bursting from my roof in a couple weeks I just hatched about 8 dozen with another 5 dozen and another 6 dozen hatching in a couple weeks. That's a lot of guineas and I have all kinds of colors too like whites pied blues royals etc

 

[prepperchickens]

I swear I didn't spend all that much time with these little guineas, I handled each a few mins every day but it wasn't until after they became so friendly that they began to get tons of attention! Little Foot in particular is like a stalker, she is always by my side. I think the way to a guineas heart is through her crop, because I noticed taking them out for supervised free ranging and digging up worms for them did a lot more to take them than handling seemed to. Even when they were tiny keets I took them in our vegetable garden to forage as I worked and I think they simply began to associate me with having fun and getting treats. Those are things they love automatically, while handling is something they have to learn to love. I think it might work better to show them you love them via hand fed treats and trips to the garden, things they will love you for immediately, rather than just lots of handling which can be stressful for them. Little Foot already does tricks for mealworms, she will jump up like a dog and flap her wings lol. This way they enjoy being handled by you because they already see you as a source of goodies and joy and fun. Ducky will climb on top of my hand as I'm petting little foot with it, and fly into my lap if she sees me holding someone else. It's because she sees anything I do as potential treats or excitement, that's how you communicate with birds for want of shared language! They understand that anyone who gives them their favorite treats and activities must be a good thing, handling is foreign to them so not as immediately associated with love, if that makes sense. My chickens are tougher nuts to crack, they like doing their own thing and they run from me a lot. The guineas are so clingy that they hog all the attention and I have to make a special effort to love on my chickens. I think this is partly due to the fact that guineas are even bigger pigs than chickens are, so they become more obsessed with the Treat Master. Does anyone know what the buckwheat noise guiness make means in general? I notice mine do it whenever they find yummy bugs on he ground and whenever I pet them, so I think it means they're happy?

 

[R2elk]

I swear I didn't spend all that much time with these little guineas, I handled each a few mins every day but it wasn't until after they became so friendly that they began to get tons of attention! Little Foot in particular is like a stalker, she is always by my side. I think the way to a guineas heart is through her crop, because I noticed taking them out for supervised free ranging and digging up worms for them did a lot more to take them than handling seemed to. Even when they were tiny keets I took them in our vegetable garden to forage as I worked and I think they simply began to associate me with having fun and getting treats. Those are things they love automatically, while handling is something they have to learn to love. I think it might work better to show them you love them via hand fed treats and trips to the garden, things they will love you for immediately, rather than just lots of handling which can be stressful for them. Little Foot already does tricks for mealworms, she will jump up like a dog and flap her wings lol. This way they enjoy being handled by you because they already see you as a source of goodies and joy and fun. Ducky will climb on top of my hand as I'm petting little foot with it, and fly into my lap if she sees me holding someone else. It's because she sees anything I do as potential treats or excitement, that's how you communicate with birds for want of shared language! They understand that anyone who gives them their favorite treats and activities must be a good thing, handling is foreign to them so not as immediately associated with love, if that makes sense. My chickens are tougher nuts to crack, they like doing their own thing and they run from me a lot. The guineas are so clingy that they hog all the attention and I have to make a special effort to love on my chickens. I think this is partly due to the fact that guineas are even bigger pigs than chickens are, so they become more obsessed with the Treat Master. Does anyone know what the buckwheat noise guiness make means in general? I notice mine do it whenever they find yummy bugs on he ground and whenever I pet them, so I think it means they're happy?

The buckwheat call is the mating call made by the female guineas.

 

[gguineasfamily]

Sounds like you have a lovely tame flock of guineas! You're lucky they're so tame, they make the sweetest pets when they're hand raised. My 2 year old guineas still come running when they see me, and they even stopped liking cuddles by the time they were a month old.

If your guineas are less then 7-8 weeks old, they shouldn't be making the buckwheat noise. Search it up on YouTube, it is distinctly recognisable when you hear it. What you may be thinking is the buckwheating noise is what I call we-jip noise they make. When I first heard it, my keets were making it and they were only like 2 days old. I thought it was the start of buckwheat but I was wrong. I thought I had nearly all girls but it turned out I have more males. The buckwheat noise is like 100 times louder than the we-jip. We-jip is just a baby noise they make when they're happy. It is the baby equivalent to the beeps and soft boowee sound they make when they're adults.

How to tell if it's buckwheat or we-jip:

Buckwheat: hens make this noise once they are about 8 weeks old. It is the mating call they use to call they're boyfriend, their person mum or their sisters or friends. They lift their head up high, their tail on the ground and they yell really loud. They open their beak nice and big and the second syllable is higher pitch, longer and louder than the first. It sounds like buckWHEAT, buckWHEAT, buckWHEAT and so on. They buckwheat at a regular pace and it sounds like a kind of metronome.

We-jip: a happy noise baby keets make. Bothe gender keets make this noise until they're about 3 months old.(I think, don't quote me on the age they stop) Then they make adult happy noises instead like booweew and beep beep boowee and all their funny little trills. Baby keets we-jip when they're happy, they only open their beak a crack. They say it when they're eating, jumping, rubbing their chest on the edge of the brooder because they saw Mum, digging holes, running around with something yummy/interesting in their beak, and they tend to only say we-jip once at a time, though when they're really excited they may say it multiple times. We-jip sounds like be-chip or anything that is really quick and high pitched to say. The first syllable is higher pitch, longer and louder.

There's my comlex explanation of guinea fowl noises. I could write a report on all the noises guineas make!