Anybody Here Raise Chickens Or Guineas?
 

I thought it might be a good idea to get some chickens but then I read about guineas. It seems guineas don't crow which means they won't give your position away to the badguys and guineas will alarm on strangers in case the badguys show up anyway. Does anybody here have much experience with either or both birds? Any big advantages one way or another?

Re: Anybody Here Raise Chickens Or Guineas?
 

There is lots of experience here with chickens. I don't know about guineas...

I do not have experience with chickens yet, as soon as I get my property that will be one of the first things I will learn

Re: Anybody Here Raise Chickens Or Guineas?
 

You have the Guineas for the Chickens.
The Guineas hens look out for the Chickens.
The goose looks out for you.
Do your homework and you will see.
PS:Do NOT get a Goose mad at you.. You will not be happy

Re: Anybody Here Raise Chickens Or Guineas?
 

Gunineas I hear are great eaters of ticks.

Chickens are easy to raise but everything likes to eat them.

Meat chickens are easy to raise and taste great.

Re: Anybody Here Raise Chickens Or Guineas?
 

Absolutely!

If you thought chickens were loud, stay the heck away from Guineas.

They are the best watchdogs money can buy. NOTHING gets close to their area without a hell of a lot of noise.

If noise is a concern, get hens, they don't make much noise.

Re: Anybody Here Raise Chickens Or Guineas?
 

Guineas are nice to have around, as stated above they're good watchdogs, and really go after snakes and insects. If you want them for that purpose, good, but they're wild and basically worthless for food, eggs are tiny and the birds themselves are not fit to eat.

Not that a chicken is fit to eat, either.:tongue_ma:

Re: Anybody Here Raise Chickens Or Guineas?
 

I've raised a Guinness.

Re: Anybody Here Raise Chickens Or Guineas?
 

Put yer glasses on, ya old fool.......different topic.

:biggrin:

Re: Anybody Here Raise Chickens Or Guineas?
 

No bias there, right Mr. Beef? :biggrin:

I was thinking I'd keep the guineas in a movable coop so I wouldn't have to contend with trying to catch them when I got hungry.

Re: Anybody Here Raise Chickens Or Guineas?
 

Keep in mind on those chicken tractors/moveable coops if you are not on level ground all the time they will find a way out.

Re: Anybody Here Raise Chickens Or Guineas?
 

A neighbor in the country once had a flock of guineas get loose. You could hear them for months after still foraging in the woods. IIRC they have a soft cackle but they never shut up and the sound carries. Having guineas would make it easy for others to find your location just from the sound of their constant chatter.

Re: Anybody Here Raise Chickens Or Guineas?
 

A nice compromise is Bantys.

I haven't raised them in about ten years (too much moving)

But intend to get back into it next spring.

They are small - supermarket gamehen sized, and

Their eggs are small too.

That being said I'd take a Banty baked with rosemary,

Garlic, butter and a little pepper almost over anything.

As well as a Banty egg omelet - those little dudes

Are supercharged.

As for care, they take kindly to being free-range chickens,

And if you throw up any kind of shed for them, they'll

Roost up at night. Most will lay eggs in the shed,

But there are always a few recalcitrants.

The nice thing is that they are somewhere between

Being wild and domestic, so do pretty well at surviving predators.

The only real problem I ever had was with a Cooper's hawk,

Who figured it out and was picking off one every other day.


scyth

Re: Anybody Here Raise Chickens Or Guineas?
 

Check this board.
http://www.backyardchickens.com/

Will post pics of my chickens asap.

Re: Anybody Here Raise Chickens Or Guineas?
 

That's just SO wrong!! I've had guineas now for 15 years. They are such useful and trouble free birds to keep around that I seldom eat one. But when I do, we always marvel at their deep white breast meat. Not as much meat as a full size chicken but two or three times bigger than a bantam.

Their eggs are pointy and spotted. They are perfectly good to eat. Smaller than a chicken egg but bigger than a bantam. I rarely eat them though since they are valuable. I've never had any trouble selling keets if I want to go to the trouble of incubating eggs.

I will agree that they are noisy and I wouldn't consider them "stealthy" or as a way of having birds that nobody know about. True, they do "alert" when a stranger comes around. But, IMO, that is overrated because they are noisy sometimes when there is nobody around. They see a bird they don't like or find a snake or just feel like have a big group sing a long.

Their worst feature is their poop. I don't notice it in the buildings or anything but my dogs love to find it and roll in it. And it REALLY stinks. MUCH worse than my chickens or ducks or geese or anything else. It's like it is oily/greasy and it sticks to fur. If you get some on your hands it takes forever to get it off!

I've got nine keets under the lights right now.

At one time, we had a flock of 35-40 walking around. We have lots of hawks and coyotes around here. And the guineas patrol my pasture and the pastures of several neighbors. They probably walk around looking for bugs over about 300-400 acres. So it seemed like I would lose one every month or two. Until I was down to my current four adults. These are the survival of the fittest birds. Either they are smarter or they just don't wander so far from home.

Oh, that brings up one other thing. Guineas are stupid. Really stupid. It will start to rain really hard. They are only 50 yards from the barn. But a group of them will seek shelter under some sparse bush. And ended up soaking wet and miserable.

Really, the biggest trick to successfully owning guineas is to get them to come home at night. They wander free during the day eating bugs. They come home and roost in the rafters of the barn at night. If you can get them trained to that routine, they really don't require any work and very little food to survive. If you are lucky, you will even get a few females that will raise their own babies.

http://www.guineafowl.com/fritsfarm/guineas/

Gregg

Re: Anybody Here Raise Chickens Or Guineas?
 

Guineas are exactly like car alarms!

Remember the first few times you heard a car alarm? You nearly broke your neck trying to see who was stealing the car.

NOW, do you even turn your head when you hear a car alarm? Same, same. TOO many false alarms.