Mini Acres Ranch

     The Guinea Hen is a crazy looking bird that originated from Africa. Males and females appear almost identical, however their highly distinguishable calls maybe the best way to tell them apart. Both genders produce a "chi chi chi" call, while only the female will produce a distinct two-syllable call that sounds like she's saying "come-back, come-back". 

     They're not the brightest critter and so spook quite often, which makes them so sought after for farms as an early warning system to visitors or predators. Not to mention that their diet consists almost entirely of the bugs, like ticks and fleas, they scratch up while roaming in their little herds. However, they're not above a free meal of chicken feed and chopped corn.

     Guineas will roost up with chickens, but they'd much rather roost high up in a tree or the barn rafters.

     At our ranch we collect eggs from the hens and incubate them indoors, since its a debate whether guineas are decent parents or not, even though they WILL defend their nest, there's little support of them actually defending the keets once hatched and so the mortality rate is higher then if manually incubated.