Guinea Fowl

Pearl Guinea Fowl

When we moved to our farm Kentucky in '03, one of the things I was sure I wanted to get was guineas. As a child growing up I would often visit my mother's family in East Liverpool, Ohio where the family has a gentlemans farm. My grandfather was particularly fond of horses and poultry (as was his father), but by the time I was older had sold most of his birds except the guineas and several mean geese.

I adored the guineas, for their ugly charm and their amazing noise. (The mean geese are worth their own story one day.) My grandmother used to say the sounds they made reminded her of a rusty gate hinge (those are the quiet noises, they make very loud ones too!) But I wanted some, if only to remind my of my grandparents, and the summer of '04 found me looking for guineas of my own.

We found a breeder in Indiana who had some for sale, and drove over there to pick up some young birds (called keets.) We brought them home, and set them up in a chicken tractor to get used to being here. Guineas have to be penned in a new place for at least four to six weeks before you allow them to roam, or they just take off.

Once we set them loose, they adjusted to free ranging and became a constant source of amusement. Guineas are not the smartest creature on the planet, and we joke that they share one brain amongst the entire group, which is why you often see them chasing each other about, for hours at a time!

Our farm has considerable road frontage, and behind our own 45 acres is another 102 which is mostly pasture and woods like ours. Across the road is our neighbor John, who has a dog named Darla. So where did the guineas decide to roam? Not behind the house, where there was freedom and safety aplenty. No. They decided to cross the road, and go play in Darlas' yard. Darla, being a dog after all, decided she found them very tasty indeed, and I could hardly be mad at her for eating them, as they were in her yard!

In the process of their daily jaunt across the road, one day several of the guineas were hit by a car and killed. The girls and I saw their bodies as we were returning from school, and I pulled into the top of the drive and got out to pick up and dispose of the bodies.

Behind us had been a pickup truck with a local hunter driving (we could tell he hunted because he had dog boxes in the back.) He pulled into the drive behind me and got out, and asked "Are those yours?"

"Yes" I replied quizzically.

"What are you going to do with them?" He asked.

"Um, I'm going to throw them away." I responded.

There was a long silence, me standing holding the dead guineas, him looking and them and then back at me. Finally it hit me.

"Do you want them?" I asked.

"Well, they sure do make good eating" he replied, "can I see them please?"

I handed the dead bodies over. Now, this was essentially road kill, right? I know people eat guineas, and their meat is actually a delicacy. But I've never eaten road kill, and wasn't going to start with birds I considered pets.

The hunter said "Yes, I'd like them if you're not going to eat them, they're in ok shape."

I told him he was welcome to them, and he drove off with the dead guineas in his truck. I shook my head, and continued down to the house, smiling to myself, and explaining to the girls what had happened.

Young guineas stuck on the roof.

To this day, we still haven't eaten one of our guineas, I just can't bring myself to do so. We have eaten a number of our chickens, but the guineas just have too much sentimental value to me to try. Whenever I look at them, I feel my grandfather smiling down at me from heaven, laughing at their antics. So from us at least, they're safe. From Darla, well, when it comes to her, they're on their own.

Summer means extra males

Summer usually finds us with a plethora of young chickens, many of whom will not stay here forever. With poultry, a good ratio is about one male to every ten females. However, Mother Nature doesn't let us hatch them that way, more's the pity. Often the ratio hatched is about 50/50, sometimes more one way, sometimes more the other.

The problem begins when all the teen-aged roosters (which we term cockerels in the poultry world) start to have their hormones kick in. They get randy. They get obnoxious. They get over-eager and make pests of themselves to the females. And too many of them can actually gang up on a poor female and in their stupid exuberance, kill one. So they have to be thinned out.

I had a long call yesterday from a woman who had purchased chicks from me earlier this spring. She was in the midst of deciding which males to cull, and needed help. (Culling can mean any number of things, but bottom line, it means remove from the breeding pens.) She wanted to know how she was supposed to determine which young males to keep, and which to cull.

We went over a number of areas to look at, aided in part by the American Poultry Association Standard of Perfection, which lists the various characteristics of the various breeds. There are specific traits that should be adhered to, and following the Standard is always the first place to start.

But reading about characteristics and applying that info can be two different things. And the best way to learn how to do so is to have an old-timer teach you first hand. But not all of us are lucky enough to have such mentors available, so we turn to others and the Internet for info.

The breed club for which I am Secretary/Treasurer, the American Buckeye Poultry Club, has a copy of the breed standard for Buckeyes (the breed we are focusing on here at the farm now.) If you're a member of the club, you can read it here. If you're not a member, you can always check your Standard (and if you don't own a Standard, get one!)

Another organization, the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, has published a step by step process by which you can assess young birds for good meat qualities and rates of growth, see it here.

Between the two, one can usually figure out which males to keep, and which need to go. We sometimes butcher our own extra males, as Buckeyes make great meat birds. Sometimes we sell some of the extras to a friend who has a market for them in a larger city nearby (yellow-skinned birds appeal to certain ethnic markets it seems.) But one way or another we winnow the numbers down. Right now we have three adult males who preside over a pen of about twenty five adult females, along with about nine young males and twenty or so young females. More than ideal, but they all get along well, and don't overbreed the hens, so they're ok for now.

Later in the summer I may rotate out the oldest male, or put him in a pen with some of his great-granddaughters, to linebreed for some reinforcement of his excellent qualities. For now, the remaining "extra" cockerels have the run of the pen, and are living life pretty large. They have more than half an acre to roam, bugs to chase and eat, and cool shade under the big oak and ash trees. Live doesn't get much better for a chicken these days. Come fall, things may change, but for now, Life is Good.

How we made the transition from city to farm

It's been an interesting road, morphing from suburban housewife to very rural farmwife. I know DH would disagree with portions of this story, but hey, he can get his own blog and then tell it his way.

I grew up in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, but my maternal grandfather had a "gentleman's farm" of sorts, and I've been around horses since I was old enough to be propped up in the saddle and not fall over. We lived about two hours north of the farm, and went down to visit on a regular basis. I adored riding with Grandpa, he knew so much about animals and plants and trees, every ride was a lesson of one sort or another. My dream when I got older was to move back home after college and start breeding horses again in the big barn down there (great-grandfather bred high end American Saddlebred horses as a hobby.)

But one thing led to another, and even though I worked as a groom/trainer at several barns on the East Coast, it didn't happen (long story for another post.) But the farm back home still remained, and one year when DH and I were home for vacation, we took the DDs down there with us, and went riding on the four pet horses that were still there at that time.

The girls were about 5 and 7 at the time, not old enough to go out on a trail ride, although DH dearly wanted to. He hadn't all that much experience with horses, and I wasn't comfortable taking them out on a long ride on horses who didn't get ridden all that often. So we just rode around and around in the arena, and left it at that.

Later that year, we discussed taking riding lessons, comparing it with the idea of buying a small sailboat (we were living in Duluth at that time, right near Lake Superior.) The decision we made then changed our lives forever. A friend told me of a riding instructor she'd met that she thought I'd really like, and I called her. She lived outside of town on a small farm with horses, goats, and poultry (gee, sounds familiar!) We signed DH and the girls up for lessons, and it all began.

Cynthia was a great person for them to learn to ride with. She has a wonderful attitude about teaching and horses, and passed those values along to my family. She introduced us to the concept of barefoot trimming and not stabling horses but letting them roam the pastures 24/7, which for me were very foreign concepts at the time. She helped us get involved in dairy goats, and re-introduced me to poultry (my grandfather and great-grandfather had poultry on the farm at one point or another.) And when we moved to northern KY, everything we'd done at their farm prepared us for being where we are now. So we owe her a debt of gratitude for all she taught us, and for pointing us in the direction we ultimately wanted to go.

It always baffled and bemused my mother, that this city-bred girl would wind up on a farm at 45, but really, if she'd thought about it more, she wouldn't have been surprised. I've never been a girly-girl, and always cherished the time spent on the family farm with her father. Mom's gone now, but I like to think both she and Grandpa are looking down on us here from heaven and are proud of all we've accomplished.

So folks, remember, follow your dreams, you never know where they'll lead you!