Posted in Homestead Barnyard

Guinea Fowl and Their Uses

It is truly Spring when the ticks come out of where ever they hide for the winter.  It was 73º yesterday – a lovely, lovely day!  But I found a tick running around on the back of my neck, under my hair.  One disadvantage of long hair!  Norm would feel and find one much quicker than I do.  And they love my long hair!

This is an area that is bad for ticks, so we need to be careful every spring, summer and fall.

One way of lessening the tick problem would be Guinea Fowl.  They are well-known for eating ticks, among other bugs.  Although they DO NOT eat the Asian Beatle that is plaguing the whole country!  Nothing eats THEM!

We have been discussing getting Guineas for here.  We had them at Historic MurphyÂ’s Landing and we had no ticks around our house.  They are a little more difficult to raise than chickens, because they are tinier and more fragile.  But once they make it through the first week, they are pretty easy.

However, if you want them to be in one particular area of the farm or homestead, you should probably raise them close to where you want them to be so that they stay in that area.

If you get adults, you need to know one very, VERY important fact.  You MUST keep your Guineas penned up for six weeks (yes, SIX weeks!) before allowing them to wander – they will not realize home is home unless locked up for that long.  Our first group of adult Guineas were locked up for a week, which is what we normally do for adult chickens and they wandered off and disappeared within three days.

Our second group were babies and they stayed locked up until they were about two months old, so they knew where they belonged.   However, our third group, which were home-hatched from the second groupÂ’s eggs, were let loose at about six weeks, were frightened by volunteers working around the barn and headed into the nether land Â… we saw them occasionally for about two weeks, then they disappeared.  Hawks, owls and raccoons probably were the causes of their demise!

Once you have the birds raised or ‘home-tied,” their care is pretty simple.  They will eventually choose to roost outside in trees instead of in a shed or hen house, so collecting them at night to put to bed will become difficult.  However, this is one of the problems that you just learn to deal with and hope that they will survive the night-time animals that roam and hunt.