WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GUINEA FOWL

Hardy and disease-free, guinea fowl live for 10 to 15 years. They can grow up to 48cm (19in) long and weigh 1.8kg (4lb). Their diet consists mostly of seeds and insects. Although they are strong flyers, they choose to run away from predators. There are more than 20 recognised guinea fowl colours, from pearl grey to dark grey with white spots all over them.

They are monogamous birds and can mate for life, like swans, but are also lazy parents: they are known to ‘egg dump’, which means they sometimes lay their eggs in other guinea fowl nests and leave them to incubate them. A clutch can comprise as many as 40 eggs. Finding where they have laid their eggs can be a treasure hunt: they hide them in the strangest places.

Guinea fowl eggs take longer than chicken eggs to hatch, 26 to 28 days. The birds are notoriously difficult to sex: it’s almost impossible until keets are at least eight to 10 weeks old and start to use their voices. It won’t surprise you to hear that one way to identify females is that they talk more. While the males make a onesyllable sound similar to “Wheat!” the female makes a two-syllable call that sounds like “Buck-wheat!” Males also tend to be slightly larger and have a taller crest on top of their heads. The wattles under their chins are bigger and stick out further than those of females. One male to five females is the recommended ratio.

The best way to ensure they stay on the home patch is to keep them from keets. If you get them when they are older, they may be flighty and will need to be kept in a large run for a couple of weeks while they get used to their new surroundings.

In Africa, guinea fowl travel behind herd animals and beneath monkey troops, where they forage within manure, pluck maggots from carcasses and feed on items that have fallen to the understorey of the canopy. In Australia, on the other hand, they are called Goonie birds, as they are considered to be lacking in the brains department.

A mix between a chicken and a guinea fowl would surely be called a ‘Chinnyfowl’.