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Guess what I found while I was out buying rain barrels in Atoka? Baby Guineas!!! These suckers are SO HARD to find this year, what with everyone jumping on the uber-cool backyard fowl train.
This is a nine dollar cup of chicks. And when they grow up, (if they aren’t too loud and bug the neighbors) they will replace our deceased dog as the burglar alarm AND eat all the bugs in my garden! Talk about GREEN bug control.
Chickens will eat bugs too, but they SCRATCH. Effectively killing all your seedlings. But guineas don’t really search for food below the surface. They can snatch dinner right out of the air, God bless ‘em.
I don’t know what sex they are yet, but unlike chickens, the boys are the quieter ones. I don’t want boys, though. They can impregnante my chickens. No cracking mutant baby guinea-chickens in the skillet, thank you. EWWWW. I hope they’re all girls.
Ivory
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Oh my gosh! So cute.
I don’t know a ton about it, but I think that fertilized eggs only look different if they’re incubated before cracking. So if you collect them everyday and refridgerate them, there shouldn’t be mutant chicks visible, even if they had the potential. I think.
Anyway, congrats on the new babies!
I’m all very new at this, but if I’m understanding this correctly you allow these chickens to roam in your garden, and they keep bugs away? They don’t bother plants at all?
Nice! My aunt always had guineas at her place. They were the best alarm system and they are cute as all get out! They always reminded me of little old ladies trotting around, kinda like Granny Clampett. ; )
I will cross my fingers that they are all girls, too.
Goats and chickens! Your backyard must be the cutest thing ever.
I’ll take a cup-o-chicks any day! Hope they do well for you..!
Have a great weekend!
They are soooo adorable…are they this cute full grown too??? What do there eggs taste like?? Chicken eggs maybe??? I will keep my fingers crossed for a cup full of girls too!!
Oh wow! I gotta look into this!
They are supposedly really good for tick control. Be careful though, I have had Guinea hens for several years and somewhere along the line they acquired a taste for my cucumbers and tomatoes. Mine are free range and have plenty of bugs to keep them busy, but they eat the baby cucumbers before they have a chance to grow. They also get into my zukes. Luckily they aren’t all that smart, so we put a little fence around the garden and it seems to keep them out.
Good luck and have fun!!!
Guineas are a lot better looking as chicks than as adults. I’ve never been able to keep them as they invariably wind up wandering out into the road and meeting their demise. But they will eat insects.
Goats and chickens! Your backyard must be the cutest thing ever.
These babies are sooo gosh darned CUTE !! I want some !! Having chickens is adicting. I already have 5 who should start laying eggs next month and now I want some guineas! They make super-uber cute teensy tiny eggs. These tiny eggs taste great. I’ve eaten many of them. The kids go bonkers for the tiny eggs during an easter egg hunt. Yaaay for YOU!!!
OK, remember me? The girl you keep reading my mind? And happen to be posting articles about everything I need to know about homesteading? Yeah, you did it again. I was at a gardening class today lamenting about the fact that I have bugs and I can’t let the chickens in the garden. Someone mentioned guinea’s and I thought, yeah right, they’ll do the same thing. Thanks for clearing that up. Guess I need to order some of those. They’ll replace the 7 chicks we lost to heat and fill out our brood nicely (will make 35, YIKES!). And just so you know, you can continue to read my mind….
Atoka?
Atoka,OK, ot Atoka, TN?
If you’re near Atoka, TN, then, heck, we’re practically neighbors. Hmmm… rainbarrels, chicks… Sounds like the dude across from the Tipton dump.
Anyhoo– If we’re nearby each other, I’d be happy to barter veggies and seeds with you.
–mf
I’m very happy to see it. Thanks.
Wow, i have been thinking about guinea’s too. Dont want too many because of the noise, but definately something i will look into. And Monkeyfister i’m in Arlington!
We’ve been raising 15 of them and they’re now 4 weeks old. My husband is building a shed for them to roost in once we move them outdoors. They’ve been trying to fly already in the dog kennel we converted into their first ‘home’. After two weeks we gave them branches to roost on so they’d stop jockeying to be the one on top of the waterer. Good luck!
Deborah–
I’m just over in Brighton!
If you want to trade seeds, eggs, surplus veggies, or any fruits of our labor, I’d be happy to meet-up with you! There are just too few like-minded, good people in this area.
I’m busy helping three of my neighbors keep their first gardens, which I helped to make, growing healthily, and I am working on a Central Tipton County Food Bank with a local non-denom church who want to feed anybody and everyone in need. Busy, busy, busy, but never too busy!
I’m glad to meet someone from my area here1
–mf
So sorry to be the bearer of bad news….but the guineas are no more. Mama fed them wrong and they didn’t take it very well.
Guineas don’t do well with neighbors as a rule. The hens’ alarm call (which they use constantly) sounds like a squeaky screen door slamming…over and over and over ad infinitum.
But he has seemed to have gotten the raccoons respect. They avoid the chicken house now.
That said, we have free range guineas roaming our old hometown (pop. under 2000). They do what I call, “Cricket Patrol” in front of the post office and library. The lady who “owned” them passed away last year, and they continue to thrive and raise chicks in the abandoned lots and local gardens despite stray cats and dogs (and opossums, owls, and ‘coons in town) The population seems to stay around a constant 15 to 20 birds. I think the neighbors throw out leftovers for them, and I know they raid dog and catfood bowls when available.
Few folks seem to mind them, but they do spread out and make noise in different areas rather than in one backyard.
I look forward to starting them next year out here on the farm. I don’t mind the noise – my peacocks are louder. I am waiting to order until the second and third goat paddocks are finished. My yard dog (Anatolian ShepardxLab) cannot resist free range chooks and carries them around until they have a heart attack. The “lab” is strong within him.
I will let the guineas ‘range with the does next summer.
We had guineas when I was a kid and they are fun but very different from a regular chicken. They are excellent watch dogs and will annoy your neighbors. I think they are a wild chicken from Africa. We had the grey and white ones and after awhile we got a mix of both. They wouldn’t roost in the hen house but all over in the trees at night. Ours used to set up a nest every summer hiding in the best of places far from the house. They don’t stop laying when they set so the nests would fill full and mama would show up with 4-5 babies and off we would go to try and find and dispose of the rest of the eggs to keep the raccoons and other critters away. We would take the eggs to the highest hill several miles from the house and launch the eggs with golf clubs out into the fields. The shells are soooo hard (if their were chicks inside they were long dead because the mom had left the nest). Just another something fun to do on the farm.