A pile of keets waiting for a mama guinea to keep them warm for the night.
Guineas tend to be polarizing. You either love them or hate them. Their most polarizing attribute is their voice. They are loud and the noise of even a small group can be deafening or delightful. For that reason, this isn't a bird you can raise in close quarters with neighbors. As with roosters, your town may have an ordinance banning them.
They weigh about 4 pounds fully grown. Like turkeys, they can fly up short distances and glide even further, so their wings are strong which can make holding an adult challenging. They are a little more difficult to wrangle, catch and carry than the more docile chicken. However, they generally stick together and will return to their house for food, water, and to roost at night. They are much easier to catch after they roost and settle for the night. Some may want to roost in the trees, but they will stick close to home. How far they wander and how easy they are to manage will depend on how many you have and the weather in your area. Here in Maine, the guineas rarely stay out at night or wander far from their house.
You can raise guineas and other birds together. Here, we raise them with chickens. The male guineas will chase the roosters away from the food, but everyone manages to get enough to eat. The roosters will try to mate with the guinea hens and the male guineas will chase them away from that practice as well. But in general, and if raised together from chicks and keets, they all get along. The guineas really aren't more aggressive than roosters are to each other. Some chicken hens have caught on to the fact that they won't be pestered by the roosters if they hang out with the guineas. However, if you attempt to introduce new birds to an existing flock, it can be a whole different ballgame.
You do have to protect guineas from predators, depending on what is in your area. We like to let them range free, so we have lost some to predators. Their most devastating predator is the human being driving a car. Other predators include racoons, foxes, bobcats, fishers, coyotes, dogs, owls, and hawks. Guineas can run very fast. It is one of their more entertaining characteristics. Guineas are also fairly healthy, long-lived birds.
Confined guineas need about 4 square feet per bird. If your birds have plenty of room to roost, they likely need less space. These birds like to roost high, so a low roof chicken building won't be very pleasant for them. We put them in a building with rafters that are 8 feet high. The chickens mostly use the lower roosts we put in, while all the guineas hit the rafters. So, they have the floor, they have roosts and nesting boxes at mid-level and rafters up high giving them three levels on which to move around.
This can be a positive or a negative, depending on whether you want to raise birds for meat. During nesting season, free range guinea hens will disappear and you may think they've been taken by a predator. More likely they've found a nesting spot away from their immediate home area and are getting ready to produce upwards of 30 keets each. If you don't want this many babies, you will need to confine the hens or find their nests and take the eggs daily.
They like to put words in the guineas mouth. I don't hear words when they sound off. Females make a low sound followed quickly by a high sound. Males make a single high sound. And they keep making them one after the other. That's it.
They say guineas are terrible mothers. I have seen no evidence to support this opinion. The only specifics I read is that they will leave the keets behind in tall grass. Since I've seen evidence to the contrary, I can't agree with that statement.
They say it is impossible to sex guineas. The males have clearly larger wattles and the two have clearly different call sounds. You can start to see these differences at around six months. The male wattle looks like a cup when viewed from the front. This is easiest to see when they are roosting above you.
They say guineas eat ticks. Well, don't depend on this to clear your yard as two of my family members got their first tick-borne diseases after I had guineas patrolling the place.
They say guineas make a good alarm system. Personally, I think they are more like the little boy who cried wolf. Since they frequently make noise at the unseen, you'll get tired of looking to see what is so alarming, thereby negating the alarm value.
They say the sound of guineas wards off rodents and that the guineas themselves will eat rodents. I have had to repair large holes rodents chewed in my coop floor and I did find a dead mouse in the coop once. Enough said.
Updated: 10/20/19 KAO
Guineas are very different from chickens or other game birds in their housing needs. While you might get the impression--as I once did--that guineas are like other game birds and will go forth and populate, they actually don't. While you can put chickens in guinea housing, I wouldn't say you could put guineas in chicken housing. If guineas are raised in a proper shelter with plenty of food and water available 24/7, they will continue to use that shelter as home base and to roost at night. If they don't like the weather outside, they may stay in, and on those days it's important they have enough space. Approximately 4 square feet per bird is preferable, but it's even more important to give them height for roosting. And this is where chicken housing is not comparable. Guineas like to be up high. Mine have three levels of resting places with their highest roosting spots about 8 feet up in the rafters. If searching for a premade building to house guineas, a garden or other type of utility shed would be more suitable than a chicken coop. It does not need to be insulated. You will want plenty of windows that can be opened in warm weather and a suitable door. A wire mesh will need to be put over the windows to keep predators out. I use a 1/2" square mesh to make sure raccoons can't reach through the fencing. The quality of the walls and doors will also need to be considered in terms of predator proofing. Predators can eat and scratch through flimsy wood and poultry fencing. They can squeeze through openings. My building walls are clad in a single layer of thick wood planks that are then covered in cedar shingles. The roof is thick wood planks covered with metal. The windows have semi-permanent 1/2" hardware cloth inserts and a hinged plexiglass window that can be opened or closed.
The floor is probably the most problematic. Wood floors are natural, healthy, and warm, but cracks in a floor over an open crawl space will allow food to fall through and attract rodents. Those rodents can then chew through the wood floor. This is the biggest problem with my wood building. I have an old stone foundation wall and really like the way it looks, but it has all sorts of holes in it. There are other options. Elevate the coop. Eliminate the wood floor altogether. Apron the perimeter with hardware cloth. Bury hardware cloth around the perimeter. Pour a concrete floor.
Most people seem to like wood shavings for bedding, but I worry about the birds eating bits of wood that look like their food. A lot of food ends up on the floor and they like to scratch in it. I prefer to use hay. They can scratch in it, look for seeds and insects, eat it, and it will never harm them. If you use shavings, do not use cedar or cypress as these are toxic to poultry.
Electricity is really convenient if you can manage it. It's nice to have lights. It's nice to be able to plug in a water heater or heat lamp. Of course, when using heat lamps, it's very important to position them properly away from anything flammable and cage them well in the event they should fall into the bedding. Also, do not use teflon coated bulbs (shatter resistant) as the fumes from them can be toxic to poultry
Updated: 4/23/19 KAO
The easiest, most sustainable and least expensive way to raise keets is letting the parents do it naturally. However, if you are buying day old keets from a hatchery, follow the same rules as raising chicks with a few adjustments:
Raising guinea keets differs slightly from raising chicks. Keets are small and need a high temperature for a longer period and they need a drown-proof waterer. These are both easy to accomplish if you wish to raise keets and chicks together.
For heat, as long as the chicks have plenty of room to get away from the heat source, you simply adjust the heat for the keets, that is 99° to 100° at floor level for the first week.
For the waterer, either use drown-proof waterers or add clean rocks, marbles, or gravel to the trough of a regular waterer.
Updated: 5/3/19 KAO
Guineas mate for life in the wild, but their actions in captivity may diverge from this natural behavior based on how you manage them. For example, you probably won't keep a male for every female, forcing the females to share one male. The rule seems to be one male for every 5 hens. Personally, I prefer to see them paired, so I would attempt to find a mate for every female. Unlike chickens, guineas are more private in their mating habits, so you may not witness the activity. Chickens and guineas can interbreed, but I have yet to see a crossbred, so I'm going to say it isn't common. However, if you want to prevent any mishaps, you will need to separate them.
Free range guinea hens will start to pair off in the spring. The more guineas you have, the farther they are likely to travel and the more groups or pairs will separate to range together. As the weather warms, the hen seeks a hidden nesting spot. A single hen is likely to hatch around 27 eggs. I say that because eggs will hatch at about 27 days and guineas and chickens don't lay eggs when they are caring for chicks. Given this time frame, a hen can be on a nest a good 54 days from laying the first egg to hatching the last keet. This also means the oldest keet will be almost a month old when the last keet hatches and the mother leaves the nest. Of course, things don't work exactly this way. Hens will lay eggs in the same spot, but not actually sit on the nest until...well, they feel like it. They can also brood two batches of keets during a single season, bringing their production up to around 50 keets per year. You can have multiple hens laying, sitting, and hatching in the same nest at the same time. Nesting hens can be very difficult to find. You can walk right buy one and not see it. You can get a clue to the whereabouts of the nest by paying attention to the male. He will go nearby and call to the female. She will sometimes answer. I once had a hen nesting across the road in the thicket. Every morning when I opened the coop, she would call to the other guineas, so I would make my way over to find her. By time I got anywhere close she would stop and darned if I could see her in that thicket. She eventually emerged, but without any babies poor thing.
Once the keets are hatched, the mother hen returns to the coop area with her keets in tow. If you have multiple hens on the same nest, they may not return at the same time, but should within a few days of each other. Now you might wonder as I do how they divide up the brood. A mystery to be solved. This is a dangerous time for the keets, depending on what they must traverse to get back home, and the ones that hatched last are the most likely to perish. When I am able to find them all emerging from the nest, help direct them back to the flock, and insure they go inside at night, they all survive.
Once arrived, the new keets merge into the flock and this helps keep them safe. Even if the flock is just the parents, the presence of the male helps tremendously as he is very involved in their care. The male catches insects, kills them, and drops them for the keets. He makes a specific call to alert that food is forthcoming and keets will run right over. He also sits down to allow them to crowd under his wings and get warm. You will see this activity more from the males than the females, so it's very important to allow your male guinea access to the brood. At night, however, he's had enough and will roost up in his usual spot while the female nests down with the keets. The necessity of the male's involvement may be why people say guinea hens are poor mothers.
If you have several hens return with their broods, things can get quite confusing. Hens will chase away other broods. During this activity, the keets get confused about who to follow and if they follow the wrong hen, she might chase them away and they are doomed unless they can find their mother. On the other hand, I have had hens accept another hen's brood. Keets from the same nest who emerge with different mothers may end up grouped back together under the head female. At night, if that lesser ranked hen attempts to sit down with the keets, the head female will chase her away.
Updated: 4/21/20 KAO
Guineas primarily eat insects, including ticks, grasshoppers, flies, beetles, mosquitos and crickets. They love meal worms, live or dried. They also eat slugs, worms, and caterpillars. Apparently they will eat the insects in your vegetable and flower gardens without doing much damage. I'm told they eat small rodents and snakes. They will eat seeds and strip the seeds off grasses. They love bird seed mix, especially the small seeds. They also eat fresh grass and other vegetation. When mine aren't ranging outside, they eat the same food as the chickens which is a layer crumble, organic or not. Pelleted feed is not recommended. They must not have access to a medicated feed with coccidiostats like monensin sodium or Coban, as these are toxic to guinea fowl. Amprolium is okay as a medication.
I have heard that guineas will eat bees, to the point where they will stand outside a bee hive and pick off the bees as they emerge.
Hanging feeders and waterers minimize waste. They prevent the birds from scratching food out of the feeders or scratching debris into the waterers.
Remember that if you confine your fowl, you need to provide them with a grit.
Updated: 4/21/20 KAO
Guineas are ready for eating at between 14 and 20 weeks. Apparently older than 35 weeks and the meat is too tough. These birds have a high ratio of meat to waste so you get a better yield than with a chicken. The meat is lean and high in amino acids. The taste is more like pheasant than chicken but does not have excessive gamey flavor.
Listen to the one-tone call of the male guinea fowl. (Posted 4/4/19)
Listen to the two-tone call of the guinea hen.
This is how loud a small flock of guineas can be.
In this video you'll hear the scream a male guinea makes when he finds an insect. Watch him pick it up and drop it for the keets who come running. Then he finds another one.