Why Guinea Fowl?

They are noisy, don’t like to stay confined, wander farther from home than chickens, and don’t produce eggs very long.

The only reason I got guineas when we moved out to our acreage, was the control ticks. We had so many ticks. The first summer we lived here, I would wake up with a tick attached, more often than not. I got used to after a couple weeks, because it happened almost every night. Even in our short grass, we would pick up ticks.

That is the sole reason we bought our first guineas, and we have been keeping them for the last 5 years.

I have purchased them as keets (the name for guinea chicks) at the local TSC store. I have ordered them via mail. I have hatched out the eggs. We haven’t been without guineas since we moved here. That doesn’t make me an expert, but I do have a lot of experience to share.

Did they make a dent in the tick population here? Yes! We didn’t really notice that first summer, because we got the guineas at the end of June, and didn’t release them to free-range until August. But, the second summer until today, I have found less than 6 ticks on my body the entire time. If I go outside their range, in the tall grass, I might end up with a tick. But, anywhere they have been ranging, the few acres around our house, I can work outside all day long, and not se a tick.

They also decimated our grasshopper population. Even that first summer, when we let them out of the pen, as they widened their circle, the grasshoppers disappeared. We went from clouds of grasshoppers every time we walked through the grass, to no grasshoppers. Last summer, we wanted to go fishing, and had to go all the way to the back of our property, to even find grasshoppers.

So, that’s the why of having guineas: for tick control.

The how of having guineas, comes in another post!

Your friend,
Anne Dovel - The Fit Quilter