Guineas and Chickens

Hello,
I recently retired from the US Navy and we purchased a small farm,
something we've dreamed of for MANY years. As I say it is small (5.4 acres)
but we hope to work it for a few years to get the kids through school and
then move on to something bigger.
Anyway, one of our first purchases was 10 keets...we had heard they are
very good for pest control...about a month later we added 30 chicks. We
would like to eventually free range the chickens or perhaps we'll build a
good tractor to move them about the property. We are now down to 9 keets
and 25 chickens...I won't go into the details at this point...
My concern is, we've tried to raise them together...we've read in
Gardening with Guineas that they should do well...that the Guineas will fly
out of the hen yard in the morning and then back in in the evening to roost
in the chicken house...our experience has been that it is hard to keep the
Guineas out of the chicken yard....they will not fly out, we open the gate
and they file out each morning...eventually they end up back in the yard and
we open the gate and let them out again...This would be somewhat OK BUT,
they tend to bully the chickens a bit...actually I think I'd like to have
them just roost in the trees at night (they roost in them during the day
sometimes) and keep them away from the chickens..
Since the chickens tend to roost earlier than the Guineas I've thought
I'd just lock up the chicken house as soon as all of the chickens are in
there thinking that the Guineas would figure out that they had better roost
somewhere and do it...I tried it last night and the result was that they
initially hung out in front of the chicken house, eventually they made it on
top of our greenhouse, then in the yard under a tree and they ended up
spending the night cuddled on the ground outside of the chicken yard. While
they were under the tree we even tried to pick them up and put them on some
branches...they pretty much just freaked out (which seems pretty common for
Guineas) and flew down to the rest...I know they really like to be
together...guess it makes them seem like one big bird.....
Don't get me wrong, I like the Guineas...they are fun to watch (though
they seem to be pretty dumb)...they DO tend to get a little loud.....the
bottom line, though, is I want to protect the chickens.
Any ideas?
Tony

Any ideas on how to get them to realize


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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Guineas and Chickens
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