…that is the question (ok. Maybe your question is why am I horribly paraphrasing Shakespeare, but that’s another question for another time). As we have explored options for grasshopper control in our garden, one of the top responses we’ve come across is guineas. We have a flock of wild guineas that live in our pasture and come around every so often so we are familiar with them to an extent. There are definitely some positives to having guineas on the farm. We’ve researched them at length. So what are the positives? Are there any negatives? Let’s take a look, shall we?
Positives
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Negatives
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I have heard the argument made that guinea can be trained to come home if you keep the pinned up long enough or that you can just fence them into your garden and voila! Roaming problem solved. I can only surmise that those people have never actually been around guineas. Unlike chickens, guineas can fly to some extent. I personally witnessed the guinea flock launch themselves 5-6 feet in the air and glide about 30 feet across our circle drive and into the pasture to get away from me. So while you could potentially build a fence high enough to keep them in the garden, most folks probably don’t want a 6’+ tall fence around their garden. It is not my intent to discourage anyone from having guineas, but I rarely see articles that give the full picture when it comes to having guineas. We are still considering but we are a long way from a solid decision on trying to actually raise our own guinea flock. Maybe I’ll just wait for the wild flock to come back around for a bit. Surely that will abate my desire. Have a great day and God bless!
Note: I apologize for the stock photos. I try to always obtain my own photos but in this particular case the “subjects” were not available for modeling due to their busy schedule free ranging.