Mrs Down's Diary January 28 2009

Apparently , when young, guinea fowls are difficult to sex. From two months old, and ours must be about four months old by now, the females call with a different note and frequency to the male. Ours have not yet developed a musical repertoire. They twitter away to themselves, but nothing that I could definitely say was a distinguishable phrase.

Also they all look the same. When older, but how old I do not know, the males develop a bigger wattle, similar to the red cock's comb you see on a cockerel. None of ours have anything remotely like that yet.

I plan to enquire further to see if I can integrate a male guinea fowl into the flock in the summer. Perhaps even hatch off another clutch of eggs and see if any of them are male. I bought my last clutch of eggs off an on-line auction site, and although only half of the eggs hatched, I think that was more my unfamiliarity with hatching Guinea fowl eggs, than the fertility of the eggs being at fault.

The shells of Guinea fowl eggs are much harder than those of a hen's egg and take longer to hatch than hens eggs. Both in the number of days incubation and in the actual physical time to get out of the egg. John and I presumed last time that as only half the eggs had hatched under the bantam, that the remaining unhatched eggs must have been infertile.

Now I realize I should have put the remaining ones in an incubator as the keets can take up to a day to chip out of the egg shell. It's a steep learning curve here.

In the meantime I am really enjoying the Guinea fowls antics. They are not nearly as destructive as my pesky bantams and chickens. The latter will scrat out a flower trough without remorse. Pull up young vegetable plants and seedlings.

The Guinea fowl by comparison are interested only in insects. Not a hint of a chemical. They are the original organic pesticides and in the summer will forage virtually all of their own food.

Another bonus is their built in alarm system. Although we have "trained" our mini flock to go into a coop at night, the coop is situated under the main shed. At the moment the shed is full of big round bales, but in a month or tow it will house the ewes when they lamb.

At harvest is our main tipping ground for grain from the field that requires drying. So they can't stay there, and , again I only know this from research, they are difficult to relocate once they have got used to roosting in one particular space.

What we are hoping is that they will fly up into the barn to roost rather than seeking to go out into say the orchard and roost there. We will never get them into the main hen hut, but the shed might be a safe alternative and they could warn against foxes and other intruders.