We lose between 3-5 chickens a year, some to old age (a chicken's typical life-span is approximately 5-7 years with only a couple of those years as egg-layers) but it's the predators that get them mostly.
(In addition to foxes and fishers, one year we found a full grown red-tailed hawk in our yard stalking the chickens. We were about three feet away before it decided to take flight. It was the most impressive bird we'd ever seen so close -- and the most intimidating as the wing span was wider than our mini van was long!).
A couple of years ago some friends were calling it quits with their chickens and offered us their remaining flock (about a dozen birds) and included in the mix was a guinea. Up to that point we had never had any guinea fowl but had been told they were great 'watchdogs.' They make a very loud screeching noise whenever they perceive danger is near and Fino had already been doing some research about these birds so he was pleased with this new addition to the coop.
And as it turned out, since the guinea became part of our flock we have lost fewer chickens to predators.
So fast-forward to this spring. We've had the single guinea for a couple of years and things were going well and not overly noisy. But with the ordering of some new baby chicks (our flock is getting older and their egg-laying was becoming less reliable so we needed a few new chicks this spring) Fino decided to order THREE new guineas.
The girls and I tried to convince him that three was too many; one more would do us just fine. The one guinea we had already made an awful racket at random times (including the crack of dawn) and we thought adding more than one more to the mix was not a good idea.
But no, Fino was set on three (I still haven't figured out why he chose this number except that he was feeling ganged up on by the females in his life, which admittedly does happen frequently, so he dug his heels in to be contrary) and that's what he ordered from the feed store (and I made note a while back that I was concerned about this decision).
The new guineas are about three months old and have been fully integrated in to the flock for about three weeks.
And in a nutshell... they are a friggin' non-stop irritation!
The guineas start their racket at the crack of dawn (sometimes earlier) along with the rooster (a reluctant adoption but he's turned out to be only a minor irritation in comparison to the guineas) and are pretty much non-stop yapping "watchdogs" all day. There are actually times when they really get going that even the air conditioner and/or TV does not drown the noise out while we're in the house (which is to say nothing of days we have the windows open).
Yesterday morning I went outside with L. to record her morning pig chores for a video project she's doing and we gave up on her voice narration because the guineas were busy scaring away every predator within a 10-mile radius.
OK, I'm exaggerating but I have a one-minute video clip to share to demonstrate how truly annoying this noise really is. Yes the video offers a visual of the pigs and L. but it's the sound track I want you to make note of.
And I'll go out on a limb here and wager you won't make it through the whole minute before you turn the sound down and/or click the pause button.
Actually a real life pause button would be really nice right about now.
The Almeida guinea posse:
And because I have recent video of Chickenland (for those new to my blog, that's the kids' nickname for our chicken coop and flock), here are the usual noises and activity that start at dawn (sometimes earlier) on any given day in our backyard.
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