Ask me any others in the comments and I’ll do my best to help!
1️⃣ Differences between Guineas and Chickens? Do you have to put them up at night?
🪶Guineas eggs are slightly smaller but yolks are same size.
🪶Guinea meat is darker and leaner (some friends have told me they love the meat, we haven’t tried it yet).
🪶Guineas range far but always stick together in a group, they don’t separate like chickens do (ours stay in our perimeter fence, if you don’t have one consider neighbors).
🪶Guineas can fly better than chickens, though they stick to the ground in general.
🪶Guineas prefer to sleep up high in the open air vs. most chickens prefer to sleep inside a coop. If you want guineas protected in a coop at night you’ll have to teach them to go in. For eg, feed them inside the coop at sunset. They do go to the same place every night so I don’t think you’d have to do this indefinitely, just until they learn.
🪶Guinea babies (keets) don’t know what to eat and not eat. The brooder should be all feed on the bottom, no bedding.
🪶Guineas have the potential to be much louder than chickens! We raised ours indoors for a month and in a rabbit tractor near our house for another month. They are very comfortable and friendly with us and the loud noise they can make has been extremely rare in our experience.
2️⃣ Pros and cons? I’m wondering if we should consider getting some for tick control.
🪶 Besides considering the differences above, I’ll keep this short to the one most important pro: if you have ticks in your area and have at least some space for guineas to range, I don’t think you’ll regret it. We have had up to 300 chickens at a time ranging throughout our property and they never put a dent in the ticks. We have 5 guineas and they’ve wiped out the tick population!
