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The guinea fowl has not yet become a completely ordinary bird in private backyards, and the exotic appearance and African origin of the bird suggest that the guinea fowl needs some kind of unusual, special food. In fact, in terms of diet, guinea fowl is no different from chicken. Food for guinea fowl, as well as food for chickens, should consist of cereals, animal and vegetable protein, minerals, vitamins and trace elements.
Since almost all parameters are the same for guinea fowls and chickens, the owners do not worry about what to feed the guinea fowls and calmly feed them ordinary chicken feed. But in this case, it must be borne in mind that it is better not to give guinea fowl food intended for broiler chickens. It will not harm them, but the birds will gain fat, which theoretically should not be in guinea fowl.
The only difference between guinea fowl and chickens is the laying season. Chickens, especially of egg breeds, can lay all year round and their diet is almost the same throughout the year. In summer, chickens are given grass, and in winter, finely chopped succulent feed. At home, guinea fowl feed on dry grain and insects in summer, but in captivity, guinea fowl, like chickens, can be given grass in summer and succulent feed in winter.
Guinea fowls lay seasonally. As a rule, the first eggs of a bird begin to be laid in the last days of February. But in caesars, the fertilization instinct is activated from mid-March, when the daylight hours are already at least 14 hours, and the air temperature is above 17 ° C, so the first eggs in guinea fowls are usually unfertilized.
The mechanism here is quite simple. Birds lay eggs in batches. Usually, each batch is “designed” for a month. Fertilization of eggs occurs at the stage of formation of a future batch of eggs. That is, February-March eggs in guinea fowls began to form in late January – early February, when the males were still inactive. The next batch, which the birds will begin to lay in April, the Caesars will have time to fertilize. Therefore, you need to start collecting eggs for breeding in April, and you need to start feeding, preparing for oviposition, from February. Even better since the beginning of winter.
Experienced livestock and poultry breeders have a principle: if you don’t know what to do, do it as in nature. In nature, the guinea fowl lives in North Africa, where the growing season begins with the start of the rainy season. The rains begin in October and end in March-April. Throughout the winter, wild guinea fowls eat green grass and awakened snails, providing themselves with vitamins and calcium and animal protein reserves for future egg-laying. In this case, most often the air temperature in winter is +10 during the day and +7 at night. Showers add coolness.
When keeping a guinea fowl in a poultry house, the bird loses its rhythm due to artificial lighting and too high air temperature, therefore, in guinea fowls, the egg-laying cycle begins ahead of time, while caesars are not so dependent on external conditions and have retained “wild” habits.
In winter, it is better to bring the diet of the guinea fowl as close as possible to the diet of its wild ancestors.
Guinea fowl diet in winter
Feeding guinea fowl at home, of course, will differ from the “wild” option. In Our Country, in winter, there is nowhere to get green grass and snails, so these ingredients in the diet of guinea fowl will have to be replaced with succulent feed, dairy products and meat waste.
How to replace grass
Instead of grass, guinea fowls will be happy to eat finely chopped fresh cabbage, carrots, and beets. You can give the birds vegetable scraps from the kitchen table. In addition to vegetables, birds should be given germinated wheat and oats. These ingredients are especially important, since it is cereal grasses that are the main food of wild birds.
Wild oats, bluegrass, wild oats and other cereals grow in the homeland of guinea fowls. There is also millet – also a native of Africa. Therefore, all this germinated grain can and should be given to birds in the winter.
From “domestic products” you can give guinea fowl finely chopped needles, rich in vitamin C in winter.
In the spring, with the beginning of the growth of young needles, coniferous trees greatly increase the concentration of essential oils that are dangerous to animals. Therefore, needles are given only in winter.
Sometimes you can stumble upon such diet tables
In general, the diet is not bad if you know about the properties of the needles and exclude it from the diet of guinea fowl in time, replacing it with germinated grain and the first spring greens.
Grass does not need to be chopped into feed. It is enough to tie the plants in a broom and hang them within the reach of the birds. Then it remains only to throw out the rough inedible stems.
Another undesirable element in the diet of guinea fowls: fishmeal. It is undesirable only for those who will eat the guinea fowl that received this flour. But for a bird it is useful. Therefore, laying hens can and should be given it.
Grain and feed
To provide guinea fowl with vegetable protein, legumes can be added to the indicated grain, in which there is little protein but a lot of carbohydrates. Usually, cheap soybeans are fed to birds, but if someone is wary of genetically modified feeds, then soybeans can be replaced with peas, lentils or beans.
Before use, all concentrates, especially legumes and corn, are crushed in a grain grinder and mixed. Guinea fowls are given the same rate as chickens. For a laying hen weighing 1,5 kg, 100 – 120 g of grain feed is required. Guinea fowls weigh more, and the rate for these birds is increased in proportion to their weight. If the guinea fowl is a broiler breed and weighs about 3 kg, then the bird should receive about 200 g of compound feed. Weight control is carried out tactilely. In case of obesity, the rate of grain feed is cut, without depriving the birds of green feed.
How to replace natural protein
In the conditions of central Our Country, snails and locusts familiar to guinea fowl can be replaced with:
- meat and bone or fish meal;
- finely chopped meat trimmings;
- fish giblets;
- cottage cheese;
- fermented milk whey, which can be used instead of water in the preparation of wet mash.
Therefore, if you give milk feed to guinea fowl in the summer, then with the expectation that the birds eat them immediately, without leaving them for several hours.
Fishmeal or fish giblets are bad because poultry meat acquires a distinct fishy smell. It is better not to give this feed to livestock intended for slaughter.
Mineral supplements and vitamins
Vitamins should normally be present in feed. It is usually not necessary to specially add, especially if the birds receive factory compound feed for laying hens.
To provide the guinea fowl with calcium, a container with shells is placed in the aviary. It is possible to mix fodder chalk into the feed, but in small quantities, since the chalk can stick together into lumps and clog the intestines of the bird. The guinea fowl will eat shells themselves, as much as they need.
Also, the guinea fowls are given a trough with sand, from which the birds peck out pebbles and bathe.
Summer diet
In the summer, free-range guinea fowls can find their own animal squirrels by eating insects and worms.
When keeping a guinea fowl in an aviary, the bird does not have the opportunity to provide itself with animal feed, and it is difficult to manually collect natural food for them in the summer in Our Country. Therefore, meat and bone meal or minced fish will have to be mixed into the feed for guinea fowl.
Experienced poultry farmers provide the birds with fresh animal protein by specially breeding maggots. If neighbors are not inclined to write complaints, then you can use these tips:
- pour a decoction of oatmeal onto a piece of turf. The birds will eat the oatmeal itself, and the flies will lay their eggs on the remaining mucus;
- pour the rest of the fish soup on the same piece of turf. Maggots will start up even faster.
Guinea fowl are fed 2-3 times a day. Concentrates are usually given in the morning and evening. During the day, the birds are fed grass and wet mash.
Raising guinea fowl chicks
In nature, cesareans are born during a period of drought, when only fallen seeds of cereals, ants and all the same small white snails are eaten from food. Flies and locusts are beyond the powers of the Caesars in the first days of their lives.
The first day after hatching, guinea fowl do not eat. On the second day, the chicks can be offered starter feed for chickens or quails. You can make food for the cesareans yourself. Unfortunately, there are very few videos on the network about cesareans in general, and about feeding chicks in particular.
The video indicates that quail food mixed with yolk is prepared for the guinea fowl in the feeder. Therein lies a big mistake. A boiled egg has enough moisture to soak the feed. Soaked feed turns sour very quickly. As a result, the chicks get an upset stomach, and the owners are convinced that for several days the chicks should be given potassium permanganate and finely chopped green onions “for disinfection”. Although there is nothing to disinfect in the intestines, it is easy to burn the delicate intestinal mucosa of a newborn chick with hot onions. Chicks are born sterile. If the egg was infected while still in the bird or the chick caught the infection in the incubator, then potassium permanganate and onions will not help. A course of antibiotics is required.
Eggs and feed must be separated into different containers. Moreover, the egg also deteriorates quickly and you need to be able to remove it without affecting the feed. The guinea fowl will find and eat what he needs at the moment.
Grown up cesareans, feed for quail plus grass with egg:
As a green food that can be mixed with an egg, it is better to take not green onions, but wheat, oat or barley sprouts specially grown by the time the chicks hatch.
Trying to feed a newborn guinea fowl by tapping the food with your finger is a pointless exercise, since on the first day the chick does not eat yet, and on the second day, most likely, he will have time to find the feeder. In general, you do not need to feed the chicks. They need to provide constant and free access to food. A guinea fowl that refuses to feed is very likely to have a developmental pathology and will not survive, even if it is forcibly fed.
An old recipe for chick food: boiled millet plus a boiled egg.
In general, feeding and caring for small guinea fowls is the same as for chickens. Weekly cesarean chicks can already be gradually transferred to food for adult birds. It is best to mix starter feed for chicks and feed for adult birds first, as chicks may not understand that large granules are edible. Rummaging in compound feed, the cesareans will gradually get used to eating large granules of “adult” feed.
Experienced poultry farmers involved in breeding thoroughbred birds argue that there is no more trouble with guinea fowls, but no less than with those breeds of chickens that lack the incubation instinct. Therefore, if a beginner is not afraid of the need to incubate guinea fowl eggs, he can safely start this original bird.