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This page contains the text known as Guinea Anecdotes or Celeste On Guinea
Fowl. The information is rather loosely organized into sections that address
most of the issues that everyone wants to know. If you are looking for quick
answers to a a few questions, use the FAQS section links below. Or click
on Guinea Anecdotes to proceed to the beginning of
the full text. Please note: The personal experience information
shared on this page should not be considered as a substitute for consultation
with a good veterinarian who specializes in birds or domestic fowl.
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Guinea Fowl Anecdotes: The basics of keeping guinea fowl
as I have learned them.
SHELTER
When you first get the birds, keep them enclosed in the area you want
them to know as home for a week or two, or as long as you feel you need to.
This will be particularly important if you have any mature birds. At first,
you might just let one or two birds out, so they can learn the territory,
and then the other birds will follow their lead when you let them loose.
Keets (baby guinea fowl) will not be a problem...they just follow "Mom",
or if unattached to an adult, they will go to their food and water. New keets
will require a brooder (closed area with a heat lamp) for warmth and protection
if no parent bird is taking care of them. Only feed and water in their designated
area to help them learn this is their safe place.
Click here for Picture Of Keets Following Hen And
Cock
Keep the brooder clean and dry, sanitizing between uses. A wash of bleach
water works well for this purpose, as it kills bacteria and germs that could
affect the youngest, unprotected keets.
Any shelter from sun, high winds, rain, and cold is essential. A shed-like
place is good, or simply a good wind break of mature trees is fine.
Guineas love to roam, so make the shelter openly available, maybe only
closing them in at night. We've learned they do best with a large tree to
roost in, if they choose. Some will prefer to use the perches in the shelter,
particularly in bad weather.
Click here for Picture Of Guineas In The Wild
Flowers
Our shelter is a boarded, roofed pen with a tight door, though I only close
that when trying to segregate or capture birds (seldom). This, in turn, is
surrounded in a wide, fort fashion, by a loose, 5-6' chicken wire fence...loose
so that predators can't climb the fencing. Remember to leave good take-off
and landing spaces for birds to glide down and fly upwards.
See Links page for links to sites with info on building
coops.
I've anchored the bottom of the fencing down with split fence posts,
laid on their flat side, and using fence staples to attach the wire to the
post. This has successfully kept even opossums, raccoons, and coyotes out
for the first time, although the bobcat still climbs the fence posts, and
the owl makes tree raids on occasion. Our ground is very hard clay, so I
haven't really had to contend with digging...you may need to consider that
as a problem to confront. Everything loves to eat guineas!
A wonderful, mature cottonwood tree lies within this enclosure. There's
a large gate for us to get in with a wheel barrow for cleaning and such.
The gate is closed and secured at night, then opened again in the mornings.
Most birds figure out eventually that they can fly over the fence when they
want. To that end, we nailed 2 by 4's between the tops of our landscape timber
fence posts, creating two "perches" to aid the birds entering and leaving
the pen via flight. They really can't see the top of the chicken wire, so
this prevents them from flying into the fence itself. These are positioned
on two sides of the enclosure...one with a north/south facing, the other
with an east/west facing. This enables the birds to face into the wind when
flying on and off the "perches". Click here
to go back to FAQS
ROOSTING IN A PEN
I never herd them in unless there are young birds that haven't figured out
how to find the door or fly over the fence for the night roost. We put feed
down in the penned area an hour or two before roosting time, coaxing them
into returning each night. It's worked quite well. Now they even go to bed
without us home, as a matter of fact.
Their habit is to start feeding at or near dawn, and return to roost right
at dark fall. So, that pretty well dictates my chore schedule. They will
learn your movements, and come to trust you. Fast arm motions tend to alarm
them, as they feel they may be under attack. Be sure to have new visitors
move with care around the birds.
The shelter has worked best on the south side of our barn, for wind and cold
protection. In freezing weather, I hang heat lamps a couple feet off the
ground for some general heating. The sick birds will gather underneath, and
they manage to keep well that way. Only in the worst weather (here, very
high cold winds and rain or snow) will a majority of birds roost in the
shelter.
Click here to go back to FAQS
Click here for Picture of Guineas and Peafowl
DIET
I supplement their diet with game bird feed and hen scratch. Layer crumbles
are needed during the spring, summer and fall seasons, to supply extra protein
for egg production. Medicated chick starter is best for new keets. Guineas
eat far less bagged food when bugs and grasses are abundant. During the winter,
they eat it quite heavily. If they ate the night feed clean, I'll feed them
again on winter mornings. See FREE ROAMING for more diet
info.
Click here to go back to FAQS
FREE ROAMING Guineas are roamers, and will work your
property like soldiers, searching for grasses and bugs all day long. They
love to eat the young winter wheat that surrounds us from fall through spring.
During the summer, they mow our meager lawn and graze the grassy fields.
Since developing our "herd", we've had no ticks, very few garden pests, and
no grasshopper damage like we usually do. They do drink quite a bit, frequenting
our pond and water dishes placed around the pen. They even partake from the
dogs' water dishes and our wild bird baths. I change their water first thing
in the morning, and at the night feeding.
Click here to go back to FAQS
INCUBATION
When we want more birds, we wait until a hen sits on a nest to start incubation.
Then we take the eggs and incubate them ourselves. They need good humidity,
as the eggs are so hard. They also require a steady 99-100 degrees for 25
to 28 days, turned twice daily. We use an automatic egg turner in our
incubator.
We've discovered mechanically incubated keets do much better the sooner
you get them out of the brooder and into the flock. Often, a hen will adopt
them and raise them, which is ideal. A hen with her own keets is your best
candidate, even if her keets are much older than the new ones. I reckon it's
common on the savannah to lose a parent, and that's also why they lay communal
nests. Click here to go back
to FAQS
NESTING
Unfortunately for us, their nesting instinct is to hide away from the pen
area, in fields and yard, where it's very difficult to protect against these
predators and our dogs. We have more successful hatches each year, but the
wild and domestic hunters get most all of our keets, and hens, at night or
early morning. Their natural habitat is the African savannah, so that may
help understand some of their behavior.
If a hen hatches a clutch, watch carefully in the mornings to see if
she leaves keets behind. When the grass is wet, they chill down and weaken.
They'll call heartily for her, and that's how I usually find them. Frequently,
she'll have so many chicks, she will not go back for them. I'll pop them
into the brooder for a couple days, then try to reunite the family. You can
set them right next to the brood and they'll move back in, no problem. Hens
are very protective of their keets, so watch for that sharp beak!
The nesting itself is highly interesting. The hens will make a depression
where ever they feel hidden and safe. Then, all the laying hens will line
up each day at that nest and lay an egg. Somewhere between 20-40 eggs later,
one or two hens will sit, and eventually hatch the entire lot. That is to
say, they'll hatch the eggs they managed to cover with their bodies. Once,
we even had three hens together on a nest!
The male stays with the female until she sits, then he roosts each night,
but hangs around during the day. That is, if he can actually find her and
the nest. They are very wiley about hiding. I usually only find the nests
when those hens make a weird, "I'VE LAID AN EGG!!" kind of cackle during
the day.
We've had nests in our shrubs, wildflower beds, wheat fields, ditches, under
grass clumps, beside the porches, and occasionally in the pen. If we fear
for the hen in her chosen location, we will wait until she sits, then remove
her eggs so she won't stay on the nest and be eaten. She'll promptly start
all over again in another locale. Occasionally, we'll transfer the eggs to
a safer nest site that's soon to be incubated.
It's highly important to have an older bird with experience to teach the
younger keets how to survive and parent. We had no success with our keets,
until we had one old gal survive a year and lead the next keets onto a wiser
path. Any predator of small game, night or day, will be sizing up your flock.
A learned bird will greatly increase the survival rate among the
birds.
Click here to go back to FAQS
NOISE AT NIGHT
I will run out in the night if they all sound off the alarm holler,(a loud,
harsh group scream), or if a big wind threatens their perching. Our two border
collies are loose at night to patrol our 6.5 acres and keep the wildlife
out of the yard. But even the dogs will kill and eat the birds, so they run
free only when we're outside with them, or after the birds have safely
roosted.
Most nights you can hear the guineas yelling about one thing or another,
but the sound is much different when they, or one of them, are actually
under
attack. Normally, guineas aren't quiet at night, but you'll know when there's
really a problem to check on.
Click here to go back to FAQS
HARDINESS
In 1995, we had a rare blizzard blow through. When the birds roosted, it
was warm with south winds. The blizzard swept from the north with 50-60 mph
winds, and blew most birds out of the cottonwood tree. If they had been facing
north (they roost with breasts to the wind), most would have been fine. We
got about 8 inches of snow with much drifting, which buried fallen birds,
and the wind chills were deadly. I hunted up all the birds I could find with
a flashlight, and put them beneath the heat lamp in the pen. Many of the
birds lost the tips of their toes, some birds' beak outer layers fell off,
and helmets and wattles were damaged.
One poor girl I must've missed lost one leg up to the ankle and the
other nearly to her knee. I kept her in a brooder all winter with a lamp
and lots of straw bedding. Dissolved antibiotic in her water kept her from
infection. Near spring, her feet broke off, after a terrible succession of
swelling and wasting in those limbs. Now she gets along quite well, after
learning how to walk awkwardly on the stumps and avoid the birds who torment
her for being different. She flies very well. Click
here to go back to FAQS
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER FOWL
We've slowly added chickens, ducks, geese and peafowl
to our farm, and they all get along fine. There is a normal amount of
"pecking order" activity, even among the different birds. No fatalities to
date from the other birds. But they aren't confined together.
Crowding any fowl closely together will almost always result in pecking
damage done by the more dominate birds. They all voluntarily return
to the pen each night, where they're safest from harm.
The problems that may occur with guineas include digging dust bath beds in
soft dirt areas...they like moist, but fluffy dirt baths, and sometimes the
best candidates are our flower and garden beds. I've had to lay strips of
chicken wire down across beds, or "mulch" with rock to stop them. We keep
a pile of dirt for new planting, and they usually will go there, which is
fine. But when they've been somewhere, we think it looks like bomb craters.
They will literally carry off huge quantities of the dirt, and shake it out
a distance away. Peafowl do the same thing. Chickens just scratch everything
out of the beds.
The birds will take to a porch if it is leeward to the winds and rain.
They do leave lots of guano around, but since they consume so much grass,
they're non-offensive little bales. They're only messy when they are sick,
or when a nesting hen (she only leaves the nest once a day to feed) deposits
a huge, smelly mess on her way. Makes dog dung look good, trust me. Otherwise,
we're happy for the free fertilizer. Where it piles up around the tree, we
rake it up and add it to the compost pile. Normally, a good rain will wash
it all into the grass, or sweep it away with the runoff.
We also keep the roofed pen neater and cleaner, not to mention sanitary,
with either straw or chipped bedding. When soiled enough for us, we remove
to compost or garden, and add fresh.
One other note of importance, guinea feet and legs are not sturdy like a
chicken's. They are easily injured, even in normal jumping off perches and
such. So be sure never to handle them by their legs like folks do chickens,
as you'll surely injure them.
Most of the birds you see limping will recover in a week or two. If
you feel a bird is badly injured in any way, it's best to segregate it and
keep it warm and fed until recovered. Antibiotics normally given to pets
have worked well for anything that worried me with infection.
They can take a lot, but if one is severely hurt, I recommend letting
the predators finish the job, or kill the bird yourself. I once interrupted
a hawk (unknowingly) before she had killed the guinea she struck down in
the field. So I found the bird shocked, but unhurt. I was uncertain whether
she would actually live, so I left nature to her course. The hawk returned
before the guinea recovered enough to flee, and had herself a fine supper.
It's a tough call sometimes. Once, in the middle of the night, I let a huge
raccoon remove himself from the pen after I caught him eating guineas, but
I had to kill his last victim myself.
If you're soft-hearted like me, you may wish to take a bird to a vet...be
sure to find a vet schooled in birds, specifically. They are rather difficult
to find, but birds are so dissimilar from other animals that it really makes
a difference. I've encountered vets that refused to treat
birds.
Click here to go back to FAQS
DYING KEETS
The most frequently asked question I've received from y'all has been about
new keets dying. Most often this is caused by a disease known as Coccidiosis.
The symptoms of this are listlessness and diarrhea, usually showing up within
a couple days of hatching. A bird man that I ask advice of told me
that this is very contagious, and can be passed to your next batch of
birds if proper sanitation measures aren't followed.
We never had this problem when I got my keets from local people selling
their extras. But when I ordered some fancy birds through a ranch store
from a large hatchery, those 20 keets keeled over within a week. Then
we were contaminated by the droppings and waste they left behind.
We washed the brooder with a mild solution of bleach to water, scrubbing
well and sun/air drying. We raked up the waste from the area around
the brooder, and sprayed the ground with the left over bleach water.
The next thing to do is to bolster the keets' immune system with medicated
feed, usually called "Chick Starter". The older birds have developed
some immunity to this disease and others, so usually you will only lose keets.
You can also get an antibiotic, called tetracycline, and sold under
a variety of brand names at farm and ranch stores, which is soluble in their
drinking water. Carefully read the instructions and dosage information
for the type you choose. I needed a calculator, since the packets I
got only had instructions for 50-100 gallons of water!
I mix the powder into a quart of water or so, and use this in their
drop waterers.If the large birds need a dosage, I put the powder, in adjusted
dosages, into the large water pans. I treated our geese in this manner,
changing their water frequently, and watching them carefully. Sometimes
you can see which bird is sick, and isolate it from the others, so food and
water doesn't become a hazard to healthy birds. Click
here to go back to FAQS
PARENTING IS NOT A STRONG TRAIT
Just like they had to learn to survive, they'll need to learn how to parent.
For first year birds, I would recommend letting them be so they can try to
get it right, but take some eggs if you find their nest(s) and hatch them
yourselves. That's the only way to enlarge your "herd" for sure. Another
option would be to confine them so they would nest where you want them to
be. I've never done that. One option that works well is to give the guinea
eggs to a chicken or bantam hen. I
rob guinea nests and replace bantam eggs each day with the guinea eggs. A
bantam hen can cover a dozen guinea eggs.
A regular chicken hen can cover up to twenty guinea eggs. This surrogate
method is highly successful because chicken hens will readily nest in more
secure areas that are provided in enclosures and chicken hens are much better
parents than guinea hens.
In our first 4-5 years of having guineas, most nest-sitters have fallen
prey to various bird-eaters. Even the hens that were good moms would get
taken at night if they roosted outside the pen, so we'd lose a good hen and
her keets. We have had one or two broods that did it all on their own in
that time.The few that did manage a hatch didn't do too well keeping the
chicks alive. We've have to brood keets until they were a little stronger
as we found them abandoned around the yard. Yes, the wet grass is a problem,
because guineas are up at first light. In their native African habitat, the
cool wet a.m. is not a problem. The chicks chill down when they should be
kept at 99 degrees. A keet can be revived if it hasn't been cold too long,
say less than a full day. But then they are weakened and don't keep up the
next day, either. So I brood them for a week or two if I find them like that.
Then return them to mom, or any hen who seems accepting. They do have a strong
mothering instinct.
Another problem is the keets not getting water. They are so little,
that the water dishes I keep are way too high for them to reach... that is
if the hen brings them into the pen. If she's scouring the yard, they might
not get water if she stops at the dog dishes or just doesn't run across any
water. So they'll drop out because of dehydration. Dehydration shows in their
legs, they'll look like "old" stick legs, not plump and rosy. If they do
jump up on the dishes, sometimes they will fall in and drown. Try to keep
a drop waterer (jug or jar atop some sort of low dish) in the area for them
to use. These are too narrow for them to jump into, they just use it like
a horse trough.
For brooder keets newly hatched, some marbles spread around the bottom
of the waterer will keep them from "jumping in" and getting wet. They
can still drink from between the marbles, yet won't get their bodies in the
water if they pop into the dish. Keets are the craziest little babies
we've EVER witnessed! We reckon this is how they manage to survive.
Our flock varies from 30-90 birds, but still lose many a nest to the
animals. That's why we raised so many...to get a number that could take the
hits and still replenish the population to a maintenance level. I want my
birds to do it on their own.
One year we incubated one clutch because the hen was white, and we wanted
her keets after the coyote got her one day. But as soon as they hatched and
were strong, we gave them to the general population, and another hen adopted
them. She had raised two of her own who were several weeks older, but
they all stayed together. Click
here to go back to FAQS
PREDATORS
You may not have the predator problem, and may have better nest success than
we do. But to get a good number of birds, I'd definitely help if you
could.
Our newest idea is to circle up 8-10 feet of regular old square fence
wire around the nests we find, and anchor it down with light metal rods or
fence posts to keep it from being tipped up or over. A wider circle should
enclose a smaller one, as we've since found that the bobcat can reach in,
and the coyotes can apparently get enough of their head through to take the
hen or scare her off the nest. Doubling the fencing seems to solve these
problems. The birds can fit through the squares to get to the nest, but the
dogs and coyotes can't get in, or reach the birds. The bobcat will snag them
and pull them through if it's not big enough around to keep the bird far
from the outside edge.
So far, it's worked well on the nesters...we even did our two pea hens
so the dogs won't rob their eggs while they are laying, but before they actually
sit. Hopefully, the hens will find a safe area to roost at night with the
keets after hatching. In nature they abandon the nest site because unhatched
eggs and egg remains, not to mention any dead keets, will attract the predators.
We'll just have to see.
We have feared for the moms before, seeing where they planned to spend
the night at dusk, and so have netted mom (we use a very large fishing net,
but guineas know what this is, and run for the hills when they see it coming!),
and spent frantic minutes trying to catch wiley, fast little keets running
through the grasses and fields. A captured hen and keets goes into the brooder
until we feel the time is right to let her try it on her own again.
If the hen was just beginning to sit on eggs, we may choose to incubate
her eggs so she'll move on to another, hopefully safer, nest site.
When the keets are real little, they can't fly up to roost. So I've
outfitted the pen with a split rail up on cement blocks to get them off the
ground at a level they can jump to. Later they'll use this to fly up the
the regular 4 1/2 foot perches under the pen shelter. Mom usually knows that's
a good place for them all to get out of the weather and harm's way. She'll
stay grounded with them the first week or two, but then encourages them to
follow her up. She'll not go back down because the danger is too great. Did
I mention snakes? We've got those, too, and an abandoned nest of eggs is
good to leave for them to munch on. Sort of a sacrifice to the predators,
if you will.
Click here to go back to FAQS
SEX DETERMINATION
And finally, we've found it very difficult to discern the
females from the males. The cocks will
grow a much larger helmet (casque), and longer,
larger wattles (fleshy red cheek appendages). We can tell you that the
calls of the two sexes can be different, but in our experience, all the guineas
holler at once, and we've never really been able to hear who's doing what!
Let's just say that the hens make a call that the cocks never make. There
also is a very subtle attitude difference in how the sexes stand and are
shaped...hens hang lower to the ground, with a larger surface horizontal
to the ground. Mature males are easily distinguished with a more erect posture,
chest out, large cupped wattles and very large helmets. They are the only
birds that will fight and perform the "guinea races". In this, two birds
chase each other (and are followed by any other interested birds), often
for hours, around the fields and buildings. Occasionally they catch up to
one another. After a brief scuffle, they exchange roles and start all over
again. We sit in lawn chairs on summer evenings and watch this go on and
on. The loser will have to fight for his honor and another hen another day.
Young males will hang together in a gang, and be very strange sometimes,
screaming at nothing, and running around like ninnies. They just have to
await full maturity to make their place in the "herd".
Click here to go back to FAQS
WEAK LEGS
In the late stages of incubation, the eggs "quicken", to mean the chicks
develop and grow, and they also begin to create some heat of their own, requiring
less generated from the element in the incubator. This causes the temperature
in the incubator to rise, and if not watched carefully, the temperature will
become too high for too long. This causes a phenomenon called "mushy legs".
Apparently, as their legs are developing, the excess heat damages the joints
or musculature. We've noticed that ours often had legs at right angles to
their body, instead of in line as they should be. Essentially a birth defect
is created.
After keets are hatched, most of us find it easy to figure out the obvious
things. We keep them in a draft-free, enclosed, warm area so they can grow
hardy enough to face the outdoors soon. We put down litter, we dip their
beaks to start them drinking, and provide medicated feed, but do they have
something on the floor for their feet to get a grip on as their muscles begin
to strengthen? What we fail to provide in many cases, is traction.
If keets do not have a surface to provide traction, a similar problem
to mushy legs will occur, in which they have weakened legs that won't stay
beneath them. Caught early, this can be corrected before too much damage
is done to the legs. So we now put down a fine mesh screen, bird cage sanded
paper, or hardware cloth, then the litter, especially if it's in a plastic
tub or cardboard box. Cement or dirt floors wouldn't need anything other
than litter.
Another point that has recently come again to our attention: don't use fresh
pine or any cedar chips, as the oils in these woods can cause the new keets
problems in an enclosed area, especially under a heat lamp. Apparently they
make fumes that can be harmful to young birds. Cobb litter or straw is good,
but don't use treated wood chips, or sawdust. They may eat the sawdust instead
of their food. In some cases, the keets can become mobile, especially
if given good footing very early after the problems are noticed. They may
remain lame, or gimp rather badly, but get along fine. Cases of the heat
induced deformity may be too bad to allow them to even walk. If you
have a keet with splayed legs, wait a week or two and observe how the keet
is getting along, then make your decision about the future of the keet.
We've put down some new keets. We have also left some until adulthood,
when eventually predators picked off the weaker and slower birds.
String Hazard
Another thing to be aware of with guineas is the string hazard. Several
times we've had to rescue a poor bird who, in the course of digging into
dirt for a good dust bath, had tangled with a simple cotton string. My
deduction is that the movement they make with their leg and foot causes said
string to become wound around their legs or toes. The string I'm referring
to is the type that we strip off our feed bags when we open them. The hazard
is that this can cut off the circulation to the leg, killing that limb, or
cause the bird to get hung, literally, in a tree that it flies to, or simply
hamper the bird in it's ability to run from danger.
If you find something has become tangled tightly around your bird's limb,
you'll need a small sharp scissors or knife blade, a cloth to wrap the bird
in while you untangle or cut, and another person to either hold the bird
or do the untangling and cutting. Guineas are a bit high-strung about being
held, so we wrap the bird and cover it's head to keep it calm while we have
to handle them. Be careful not to suffocate it, though.
To capture a bird, either lure it into a closed area (a small pen or shed
is good) where it can't fly away from you. You can also net it with a fishing
net or cast net, being very careful not to harm the bird, and working as
quickly as possible to cover the bird to calm it. Remember not to grab your
guineas up by their legs like we do chickens (and peafowl) because this may
hurt the guinea's legs. Wrap your hands very firmly over the wings to keep
them from flapping and get a towel or cloth around the body and head as soon
as possible. Talking calmly helps if they know your voice, and excess people
should stay away or at least out of sight until the bird is covered.
If there is anything I missed, or you have questions about, I'd be happy
to cover it for you. We've found so little literature on guineas, all I can
offer is our experience. Good luck to you! And, please write to let me know
how it goes for you. We would love to hear YOUR stories about these highly
amusing , and extremely beneficial birds. Definitely a farmer's friend!
-Celeste-
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