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A bird with meat similar to game, popular in Europe, is now beginning to interest poultry farmers. We are talking about the guinea fowl: a bird with a beautiful interesting plumage and a head “for an amateur”. To some this head will seem scary, to someone beautiful.
True, poultry farmers do not know one European secret: practical Europeans prefer to grow guinea fowls on special farms located away from housing. And it’s not that guinea fowls cause some problems when keeping them in a personal compound. Just birds are very noisy and eccentric. Guinea fowl raise a cry at the slightest pretext, and even try to fly. Farm workers enter the room with guinea fowls after putting on earplugs.
But there is a plus in such loudness. In terms of vigilance and the level of cry, guinea fowl surpass even the legendary geese that saved Rome. No one will pass by the guinea fowls unnoticed, and any intruder who enters the poultry house will immediately be given out by these birds.
At the same time, breeding guinea fowl at home for beginners is not as difficult as breeding geese popular in Our Country. Fertility in guinea fowl is higher, and the incubation of eggs is similar to the incubation of chicken eggs. There are differences, but small, so many owners of guinea fowls, without suffering from setting up incubators, use the same mode as for breeding chickens. In a slightly smaller number, but the crown princes are also displayed in this mode. Often it is easier and less expensive than trying to follow the “native” regimen, especially if chicken eggs are also laid along with caesarins.
Breeding and keeping guinea fowls on a personal farmstead
Novice poultry farmers may be afraid to have guinea fowls, as they do not know what kind of bird it is.
The common guinea fowl, the wild ancestor of the domestic one, is a shy inhabitant of arid regions, carrying a small number of eggs and breeding in secluded places. Birds live in flocks.
Domestic guinea fowl in terms of economic characteristics is almost the same as wild. She began to lay more eggs (60 – 80 per year), but due to the lack of quiet secluded bush bushes, she does not burn with desire to incubate them. In fact, the bird is just scared. If it is possible to provide the guinea fowl with conditions similar to wild ones, she herself will hatch the chicks, which is successfully proved by the guinea fowl in the photo, which has the ability to hatch chicks in a quiet place.
They did not leave the guinea fowl and their wild habit of walking everywhere only in a flock. Sometimes it is very interesting to watch how a dozen birds return from a day trip. Yes, they, even being at large and knowing how to fly, will not go anywhere and will return back in the evening. Of course, if someone does not catch them on a walk. Even the chicks stay together all the time.
The main thing is to catch the molted guinea fowl in time during the molt and resume the winding. The second way to keep flying birds from flying away is to cut the tendons at the wing joint. But this operation must be carried out by a veterinarian.
If it is not possible to provide birds with a life in a spacious aviary, guinea fowls will have to be bred with the help of an incubator.
To obtain an incubator, and not a food egg, one caesar will be required for 5 – 6 females. But with the determination of the sex of guinea fowls, the owners have certain problems. The sexual dimorphism of guinea fowl is weak and can be easily mistaken.
How to distinguish a female guinea fowl from a male
It is usually recommended to distinguish already sexually mature birds by earrings and a growth on the head.
The growth on the beak of guinea fowls of both sexes usually looks the same.
Earrings are very different.
In theory. In practice, there may be practically no difference. But the caesar’s earrings are often curved and sticking out to the sides, while the guinea fowl’s are smaller, straight and directed downwards.
The second difference: on the crest on the head.
In the male, the crest is usually smoother and smoother towards the tail. In a guinea fowl, the crest resembles, rather, a volcanic cone.
These birds have different cries. The Caesar “bursts”, but the cry of the guinea fowl must be heard.
However, other owners of guinea fowls believe that attempts to determine the sex by the shape of the head are of little avail, since the secondary sexual characteristics are often very similar in birds of this species. The size of the guinea fowl also differ little from each other, and there is always a risk of mistaking an obese guinea fowl for a male. Therefore, experienced guinea fowl breeders prefer to determine the sex of birds based on the results of examining the cloaca.
Sex determination of guinea fowl
Egg collection and incubation
Not intending to incubate eggs, guinea fowls can scatter them anywhere within their walking range, so the owner will either have to limit the walking area of guinea fowls during the laying season, or master the profession of a searcher. Since no one wants to be a search engine, they usually limit walking to guinea fowl.
This is where other problems begin. Guinea fowls are very careless with their eggs and can easily bury them in bedding or soil them in litter. With such treatment by birds, caesar eggs do not shine with purity.
The rules for laying eggs in an incubator require washing dirty eggs before incubation and disinfecting them with a solution of potassium permanganate. But when washing, it is easy to erase the protective film that protects the eggs from the penetration of bacteria into them. The incubator, no matter how you disinfect it before each egg laying, will not be able to clean everything 100%. Yes, there are bacteria in the air.
Therefore, washing or not washing eggs can be decided experimentally by breeding two batches of caesarlings from clean and dirty eggs. But in any case, if you manage to plant a hen even on dirty eggs, the hatchability percentage will be higher, since the bird can provide the care and temperature conditions necessary for the eggs. An incubator, even the most perfect, is not capable of such fine adjustment.
Medium-sized eggs are laid for incubation. From small eggs, most likely, an underdeveloped chick will be born, and large ones may turn out to be with a double yolk. Eggs should be the correct form, brownish color. Guinea fowl eggs are usually creamy, but the color of the shell can largely depend on the individual characteristics of the bird.
The incubation of caesar eggs lasts longer than chicken, but less than duck or turkey. It should be borne in mind that often the data on incubation can deviate in one direction or another. This largely depends on the temperature in the incubator. If it is too high, the chicks will hatch earlier, but among them there will be many unviable ones. At a lower temperature, incubation will last longer, but the chicks will come out fully developed. Of course, the maximum and minimum temperatures should not deviate too much from the recommended values. Usually it is ±0,5°C.
You need to turn caesar eggs at least 4 times a day. The incubator, depending on the model, either turns the eggs on its own, or it can be programmed for a certain number of turns, or the eggs in it must be turned over manually
In underdeveloped chicks, when hatching, a significant part of the yolk remains in the egg, which either dries up or has time to be drawn into the abdomen.
You can also experiment and try to breed different birds in one incubator. For this method, two incubators are needed, in one of which the main incubation process will take place, and in the second, at a lower temperature, those chicks who have reached the deadline will hatch.
Co-incubation of eggs of different types of poultry
In order not to get confused which eggs were placed in the incubator when, the date is written on them.
Requirements for the maintenance and care of crown princes
After hatching, the chicks are transferred to a brooder. You can leave the chicks in the incubator until they dry out, you can immediately transfer to the brooder. Usually the chicks are left to dry completely.
After being placed in a brooder, care for the cesareans is carried out in the same way as for chickens. There is no particular difference between these two types of birds, so everything that is suitable for a chicken is also suitable for a guinea fowl.
At first, the chicks are kept at a fairly high temperature of at least 30 ° C. However, this is not a dogma and it is better to focus on the behavior of the chicks themselves, especially if there is no thermometer. If the chicks are cold, they huddle together, squeak and try to get into the middle of the flock. If the chicks calmly roam the brooder, periodically trying to peck at something, then they are comfortable at this temperature. Worse, if the chicks fled to the corners, lie and breathe heavily. They are overheating. A frozen chick is easy enough to warm up. Cooling quickly without dipping into water is very difficult. And when bathing in water, the chick will get hypothermia.
When hatching in an incubator, chicks often have problems such as improper limb development. Often chicks are born with paws in different directions. You can try to tie the paws with electrical tape, but with a high degree of probability, such a chick will die anyway.
Maintenance and care of adult guinea fowl
Like chickens, cesareans fledge and grow very quickly. The grown chicks are transferred to the aviary, and almost adult birds are released into the general herd. It must be remembered that they begin to distinguish birds by sex only when they grow up, and you need to immediately decide which part of the herd to send for slaughter and which part to leave for breeding. If the young are not slaughtered at 3 months, the birds may become obese. The French broiler breed is especially good at gaining fat.
These birds do not require any special care. The poultry house for guinea fowls is organized in the same way as for chickens. Both of these types of birds love to sleep on perches, so a place to spend the night is sure to be equipped in the house.
Guinea fowl are not particularly afraid of winter. The main thing is to have food, deep bedding and protection from the cold wind.
The maintenance of guinea fowls. Covered aviary.
In Europe, they love the meat of guinea fowl, and most importantly, they know how to cook it, since the meat of these birds, if cooked ineptly, will be tough, although tasty. But today it is already easy to find recipes for cooking caesar meat in France or Italy, so guinea fowl can diversify dishes on the table.