I have a few smallholding friends who live locally. One of them is the head of a local private school that has a little smallholding attached. He's been great in getting a mini farm going for the children there (I wish every child could be so lucky), along with a polytunnel and veg garden.
Last week he was going to borrow a broody hen from me to hatch out some guinea fowl eggs, but in the end he only managed to collect five eggs, so decided it probably wasn't worth moving the hen. I aid I'd give it a go here anyway.
We got back and found the broody hen, or thought we did. They had been fighting so it was hard to figure out which hen was the "right" broody one. I got it correct on the third try! But she is now well and truly sitting on those eggs!
We shall have to wait and see if they are fertile or not. But a fun experiment either way. I have another broody hen as well and I'm half tempted to put some bantam eggs under her!
Guinea fowl seem like funny creatures, they should be interesting (and noisy) to have about the place.
Anyone else hatched Guinea fowl under a chicken or kept Guinea fowl?
The nice thing about pigs, is they eat a lot of scraps which is handy when you have a lot of garden.
ReplyDeleteWe had chickens many years ago but never any of the more exotic fowl. If I were to do it again, I would try my hand at raising just about any type of fowl.
All smallholding animals cost a lot of money to keep. If your pigs were free range like ours they would eat a lot of grass in the fields. Having a boar and sows means we get a lot of piglets instead of having to replace the pigs when they are fattened.
ReplyDeletePretty hen - what's the breed?
ReplyDeleteGuinea Fowl are great, good alarms, good entertainment and very tasty.
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