Previously…

Our Guinea fowl experiences actually started about 20 years ago. We ‘inherited’ a flock of Guinea fowl when we purchased a piece of property. There were about 20 birds in the flock. They had no coop, were not ever fed or watered, and lived out in the woods behind the house – with frequent visits to the yard for bug meals. I cannot comment on that flocks bug-catching, as they were there when we arrived. However, I can say they made excellent ‘alarms.’ The flock would make quite a noisy commotion whenever they saw anything new on the property. This included ourselves – for about a month.

When we bought our property in Montana, we decided to raise some Guinea fowl to deal with the countless bugs – especially grasshoppers and ticks. We also were endeared by the fact that Guinea fowl will warn of, drive off or kill snakes. Thus began our journey down the road of Guinea fowl raising and keeping.

We ordered 30 Pearl Grey Guinea fowl keets from Cackle hatchery. All arrived in good health on June 26, 2009.  They were 2 days old. We inspected each keet, taught them each to drink water and then placed the fragile little birds into their brooding box. It was on that day that we began taking notes, photographs and videos of our Guinea fowl project.