Have you ever thought about keeping chickens? It is an odd question, I suppose, but for folks living in the country, not so unusual. After all, chickens provide eggs for breakfast, little chicks that grow into chickens, and later on in their lives, they can provide Sunday dinner! Kind of a multipurpose product, if you see what I am getting at. The only problem with chickens that I can see as a gardener, is I’m not real fond of seeing my beds all dug up, and chickens can make a mess of a garden bed in no time at all. So now, the next question is have you ever thought about keeping guineas? Guineas eat all the bugs they can find and don’t tend to make such a mess of your garden. If the answer is yes, I have some great tips for you on how to get started.
First, you must decide if you want to start with keets (the chick of the guinea) or if you’d rather start with adults. I didn’t have a choice when I started, or even if I wanted to start, with keets or adults, as the two adults I had first came and roosted on my roof, and would not leave. Therefore, I have experience with both ways of acquiring guineas. I am not sure which I’d prefer, had I been given a preference, as the two are completely different animals (sorry).
Let us start with keets. They look very similar to chicks for the first week or two, then they start to develop their wing feathers and the chicks do not. There are a few other differences between the keets and chicks, one being in my experience that the keets will grow faster than the chicks. They have delicate legs and feet, so they should have a non-slippery surface to walk on. Then there’s the food for the keets. They need a high protein starter feed for those fast-growing little bodies and plenty of water. The keets will need a box to stay in until they’re older and this box is usually referred to as a brooder box. It need not be very large, depending on the number of keets you have. It will need to be kept clean of keet poop as the poop can stick to the keets’ feet and cause them pain, and it’s not easy to remove without hurting the feet. Best practice is keeping it clean. I prefer quarter to half-inch wire mesh. This enables the feces to drop to the ground under the box and makes for much less clean up!
If you decide on adult guineas, the process is a little simpler. First you, or someone who is better at this particular job, must catch the guineas. They are incredibly fast and won’t be caught unless they’re penned up in a small area. After catching them and putting them into an appropriately sized transport box, you just take them home. Before acquiring adult guineas, you should have your permanent home for them all ready to go. The optimum situation is that not only the coop is ready, but there is an enclosed pen for them also. Remember, guineas can fly, so you’ll want to have a cover over the area where they will be kept. Adult guineas will need to be penned up for approximately three to four weeks to allow their new home to be “imprinted” on them. After this time, if you’ve been feeding them and giving them treats in their pen they will want to return to it every evening. Guineas are blind in the dark, so they really do want to come home!
This is by no means a complete guide, but it should help you decide – keets or adults?
