Guinea fowl – You are about to discover some information about a large insect and seed-eating bird named Guinea in this article. The information you are getting from this site can be helpful for those who want to keep this birds for ornamental purpose.
Daftar Isi
What’s Guinea Fowl?
This is a large bird that is natively found inhabiting a variety of habitats across the African continent. But nowadays, many people raise this bird so that it has been introduced to various countries around the world.

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This bird is a ground-nesting bird which spends much of their time scratching around onthe ground to search for something to eat. Moreover, they like to be in small group. They can be found inhabiting forests, jungles, grasslands, shrublands, and even in the areas of desert, depending on the food availability.
The Bird Facts
Kingdom : Animalia
Phylum : Chordata
Class : Aves
Order : Galliformes
Family : Numididae
Type : Bird
Diet : Omnivore
Size : 40 cm – 71 cm
Wingspan : 150 cm – 180 cm
Weight : 0.7 kg – 1,6 kg
Top Speed : 35 km/hour
Lifespan : 10 – 20 years
Color : Black, white, brown, red, yellow, white, grey
Habitat : Forest, desert, grasslands
Main preys : Insects, worms, berries
Predators : Large mammals and reptiles
Conservation Status : Least Concern
Where Do Guinea Fowl Come From?
This bird is native to the more arid areas of the west coast of sub-Saharan Africa, but they are also currently found in India. In their native Africa, domestic guinea fowl has been used as house animals for hundreds of years.
According to Wikipedia, besides found across sub-Saharan Africa, some species are almost in the entire range, others more localized, such as the plumed guinea in west-central Africa, and the vulturine guinea in north-east Africa.
They also inhabitant in semi-open habitats such as savanna or semideserts. Meanwhile, some other species, mainly inhabit forests. And some perch high on treetops.
The species of helmeted guinea fowl has been introduced in East Africa, the West Indies, the US, Britain, India, and where they are raised as either food or pets purposes.
Guinea Fowl As The Ultimate Guide

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Many people are interested to guinea fowl because this bird are so loveable and full of personality. But they actually have more power than being loveable. Do you know what it is?
The bbird is useful for gardeners due their ability to demolish bugs and pest insects in the garden. How about guinea fowl and snakes? Besides helping gardeners to repel the bugs or insects, this bird are also popular with their loud warning cries that serve as a perfect alarm system against predators.
It needs to be noted that many people think that this bird is able to attack, even kill small snakes. The fact, this phenomenon is rare and may not necessarily be the whole truth. According to some poultry gurus, even though this bird have the ability to attack snakes, but the main benefit is the fact that they tend to deter snakes from coming close to the property by their cries and calls.
Will Guinea Fowl Protect Chicken?
Due to the guinea fowl sound, this bird is also great guardiands of the flock of chicken. Their excellent alarym system will loudly warn any intruding predators, animals, even people who try to enter the coop area. Sometimes, they will also eat many predators which will harm the chickens such as mice, rats, or insects.
Although the guinea fowl and chickens do frequently co-exist reasonably peacefully, but you need to be aware with the guinea habit. They will rule the roost and may bully your chickens. Therefore, separating the chicken and guinea coop is a good solution for this occurence. You should keep roosters and male guinea fowl separate.
What Is Guinea Fowl Food?

The guinea fowl is an omnivorous bird. Guinea fowl food consists of both plants and other animals. They primarily feed on worms and insects on the ground, along with seeds, berries, and also small mammals and reptiles. You can also feed them the same kinds of food that you give to your chicken, but particularly enjoy grains such as corns. However, if your guinea fowl are ranging freely, you don’t need to give them so much.
Free-range guinea will find much of their food even though a supply of feed gives them a good reason to return to their home. In winter, they need extra food and fresh gardens will be lovely for them.
Guinea fowl love munching on all the bugs or insects in your garder. They will get rid of the pests with minimal damage to the greenery. Here are some insects that this bird likes to eat: ticks, ants, grasshoppers, and other insects.
How Is The Guinea Fowl Breeding?
When a guinea reaches about 35 weeks old, they start breeding in the spring with one male to five or even to eight females. The female guinea builds a nest out of twigs and leaves on the ground, often somewhere more sheltered. The hen lays between 8 – 15 small eggs. The guinea fowl eggs are smaller than the chicken eggs but the shells are much tougher.

Guinea Fowl Eggs
The eggs take 26-28 days to hatch and you can also use a broody hen or incubator if the mother don’t want to brood their eggs. The guinea chicks is called keets. They naturally remain with their mother until they are big enough but guinea hens generally don’t make very good mother. A turkey hen is a good substitute mother if available as turkeys tend to stay with their chicks longer than the chickens do. Then, how to brood the keets hatched by incubator?

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It is special treatment for the keets hatched by incubator machine. The keets can be brooded under a heat lamp like chicks. The keets are very feisty and agile so that you need to keep them in an escape proof pen. Besides, make sure that they have a non-slip surface to run arouond on because they still have quite fragile legs.
Depending on the weather, the keets can be moved to their outdoor quarters when fully feahered. It is about 6 to 8 weeks and fed on growers’ pellets.
So, Are You Interested To Keep Guinea Fowl In Your Backyards?
Guinea fowl is really one of the best natural solutions to a bug problem in your backyard. Rather than doing extra work and spending much money to take control of bugs in your garden, you can simply secure it with some guinea fowls and then let the nature do the rest.
If you have a question just feel free leave the comment in the leave a reply form below
Related:
guinea fowl and snakes, guinea fowl eggs, domestic guinea fowl, guinea fowl food, guinea fowl sounds, guinea fowl breeding, guinea fowl ticks, guinea fowl coop
Good day sir/ma
I have been in Guinea fowl egg business for more than decade,so I am thinking of expansion in my business by taking it beyond Nigeria local consumption. Please enlighten me on western world that take the eggs for exportation purpose. Thanks as I look forward to hearing from you.
First of all, we do apologize because as long as we go through this business, we have never done shipping eggs overseas. Because indeed we have not found a cargo that is suitable for shipping eggs. Besides that, eggs are very risky for long distance shipments, such as cracking or even breaking in the middle of the journey despite the best packs. Because we don’t know how the condition of the package while traveling, so to avoid these risks that can disappoint our customers, we decided not to send eggs overseas.
However, if we may give advice, we often get messages from abroad that they are quite interested in guinea fowl and other types of unique chickens. These countries are Zimbabwe, India, Pakistan, also Nigeria. Hopefully our answer can help.