In the background of some of my podcasts and sometimes running through some of my pictures on the farm Instagram occasionally you'll see some funny looking birds.
"What kind of bird is that?" a lot of people will ask when they stop by for the first time.
That bird, my friends, is the African Guinea Fowl.
Guineas, are a semi-domesticated birds originating from Africa. They're about the size of a chicken, but more athletic, not as intelligent, and very loud. They wander wild around our property because when we tried to keep them in with our chickens (which you can do, but in our case both bird types were unhappy) there was a bit of havoc.
Let's start from the beginning. Why did we get guineas? What's the point?
I first heard and saw guineas while visiting my husband's family. My sister-in-law had gotten a mated pair of these funny looking birds. I remember pretty regularly as the sun went down, my sister-in-law having to climb up onto the roof of the house to catch them and put them away into the coop at night. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, one of the pair was killed, and because guineas are monogamous, the remaining one spent its days mournfully calling for its mate, making bad life choices (like refusing to go into the coop at night, not eating well, etc.) which also led to its demise. And that was the last encounter with the bird type until we moved to the homestead.
The first year at the farmhouse was difficult for me because there are so many more bugs than in the country. I know I've said this before, but truly, truly, if you've lived in the suburbs or the city your entire life, the sheer volume of bugs will leave you aghast. Everyone when they move in the first year they'll say, "Oh my goodness... I'm just battling ants these days."
And all of us who have lived here for awhile now will say, "Oh yeah, wait until spider season." Or, "Yup, and just wait until earwig season." Or, "Yeah it's kind of a bummer, just glad fly season is over." Or, "Whoo boy, just you wait until <insert another bug that arrives in plague-style quantity."
It's even more difficult for me because I'm blessed to be absolutely delicious to all manner of bugs. The fleas, the ants, the spiders, mosquitoes, ticks---whatever glorious combination of proteins and cholesterols and personal odor I have seem to be truly compelling and irresistible to bugs, and I could not be outside for longer than a minute. It was... difficult. Our young puppies were coming home covered in ticks as well, and I spent many an evening with my Tick Tornado, removing those little nasty critters from their coats.
My mother-in-law recommended guinea fowl. I think opossums are also an alternative to the ticks, but our dogs scare them away--and also, it's not like that's an animal that we can pick up at the store. We needed something that would be unperturbed by a pair of German shepherds running them down, available for purchase, and effective at pest control. So we got some keets. Keets are what you call baby guinea chicks. We got a box of little marshmallow poofs that peeped and chirped and flittered around in our little brooder. They were adorable and stupid. That's a common trait of guineas at all stages of life. The stupidity, not the adorable-ness.
I have seen a guinea get stuck behind a low fence (one that they could honestly hop over if they tried) and run the length of this fence for HOURS trying to figure out a way over. And then when it starts to get dark, it will suddenly remember it can fly and just flap on over it to go roost for the night. They will wander around in front of my husband's office window all day, hearing him talking on various phone calls, but when he uses his business voice on a conference call, they get spooked at the "stranger" and start hollering their heads off, and get him in trouble for the background noise.
Guineas have very small heads for their bodies. They come in a variety of colors, from gray to lavender, browns, black, or even white. They like to roost high in trees when the sun goes down. They kind of whistle lovingly to each other as they travel in packs. They are quick and light on their feet, and it's always kind of fun to watch the parade of them go by the house, single file. They've got rather lovely feathers that sway around their legs as they dart from place to place, and it reminds me of ladies in hoopskirts, when they lift them up to run. They've got longer legs than chickens, and their joints are quite delicate so you don't want to catch a guinea by the legs because you risk dislocating or breaking them. Rather, if you must catch a guinea, it's better to pin their wings down and hug them to catch them.
Males and females generally look the same, with the males being slightly bigger. You can tell them apart though because of their obnoxiously loud cries. A male guinea makes this screeching sound akin to the car alarms. Females make that same grating sound but they can also do a very loud "Buh-kawk!"--like an exaggerated chicken. When my youngest daughter was a baby, I would work in the garden with her strapped to my back, and the guineas would squawk at me in protest for disturbing them. She would listen to their cries all day, and her first sounds she made was actually "buh-kawk." They are the loudest at dusk as they begin the process of turning in for the night---which I believe is an incredible foolish thing to do. They're literally calling, as loudly as they can into the growing darkness, "Here I am nocturnal predators! I am here, completely blind and helpless in the dark!" But amazingly, they're still around in the morning.
Guineas also make this melancholy cry when they lose a mate or when their eggs or keets die. We've heard it several times in the summer because our guineas live wild on our property. They go off into the tall grass, under a bush, or in my over-grown garden and build their nests and go broody. I get rather concerned when our guinea flock seems to have shrunk down to nothing, worried that they've been getting picked off by predators (which does happen) only to have all the adults show up again a month later with a bunch of cotton fluff trailing after them (popcorn chicken, my husband calls them). When they're watching babies, it's recommended to keep a good distance from them because while guineas are normally skittish and keep away from us at other times of the year, when there are babies, all the adults, but especially the mothers, will come at your face, claws and talons out if they think you're a threat to their babies. Even if you're not a threat and just happen to be too close for comfort. All of us have been attacked by an over protective mother at least once over the past few years. I can't hold it against them for wanting to keep their little ones safe, but I do grumble at them for attacking me when I'm trying to safe their chicks from trouble, like getting stuck in chicken wire, falling into a toad hole, trying to cross a puddle, etc.
They roost in the big oak outside of our house. We don't really need to do anything with them because they spend all day running around the house and the pastures eating bugs of all kinds, which was why we originally got them. No ticks. Very few mosquitoes. No fleas, no squash bugs, no cucumber beetles, not nearly as many ants as their could be, very few bugs of any kind (for the country at least.) I can spent time outdoors if I so choose to bear the heat. Now, the guineas do like to wander through my garden and peck out a few cucumbers, some tomatoes, and a melon or two, but that is easily solved by netting some things, or covering melons with pots. The nuisance they bring to the garden hardly outweighs the personal comfort of enjoying the outdoors.
Every now and then I'll pick a beautiful tomato only to discover that the whole back side of it has been pecked through by the birds, or they'll dig out my carrots because they were rolling around in a garden bed, and I'll feel the rage of a gardener broiling within me, and then my husband volunteers to shoot them. "The poor man's pheasant," as they're called. I haven't personally had a chance to eat them, but I suppose at some point that's another reason that we have them.
So... if you have the need for a variety of loud but amusing birds, natural pest control, and all around interesting farm feature, consider getting yourself a couple of guineas.
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