DID YOU KNOW? Guinea fowl are a game bird. This GUINEA FOWL means that they can live in the wild and be hunted and taken for food. Guinea Fowl are good to eat roasted like chicken! Guinea Fowl have very distinctive white and grey spotty feathers, bald pale blue neck, red wattles, and a brown ‘helmet’ on top of their head. A female is known as a hen. The male is called a cock. The young are keets. The hen is smaller than the male. She communicates with and two syllable call, whereas the male communicates with a one syllable call. Guinea fowl will spend the day foraging on the ground for insects, worms and and seeds; most of their diet consists of the bugs they find. At night, guinea fowl go to roost high in the trees. As well as being good flyers, they can also run fast, both means of escaping predators.

Guinea fowl hens lay their eggs on the ground. As with other fowl and poultry, they will lay up to one egg a day during the warmest 9 months of the year. Guinea fowl go broody (sit on their eggs until they hatch) once they have laid a clutch of 20 to 30 eggs. Their eggs need a 26 to 28 incubation period, whereby the eggs need to be kept warm. In the wild it is the male that will guard the nest in the day. At night he will go to roost. In the wild it is common to lose 75% of a brood (the group of hatched keets) in the first 2 weeks. Newly hatched keets are very small and particularly susceptible to the cold and damp.