I've been thinking for a long time about adding a little poultry to my garden. I have 2 acres, about 1 1/2 acres of which is dog-free. I am looking for something that is fairly low maintenance (so no chickens, thank you very much, my cousin has those, and I know what they take!)
I was thinking about either ducks, peacocks, or guinea fowl. I would like something that eats grasshoppers, since that is a big problem here in NM, and also something that won't get eaten by the goshawks that nest nearby. (they like songbirds but I think a large fowl would be too much). It can get down to 0 in the winter here, although usually it doesn't go below 15 degrees, and it can get as hot as 105, although usually summers are in the high nineties.
I have read what people said about ducks recently, but I haven't seen anything about peacocks or guinea fowl. I am not too worried about them being a "pet" (although friendly ducks do sound nice) but I DON'T want to be chased by my own birds, which is why geese are right out. Any suggestions or personal experiences that you have had that would help me decide would be very appreciated!
Best kind of poultry for garden duty?
I would guess guineas--they area from Africa and should be able to take the heat--but others in colder climates know more about them in the cold.
i highly recommend GUINEAS! for more and the best info [besides a few guinea threads buried in this forum] please visit: www.guineafowl.com and get the book!
How much noise do guinea fowl make? My mom used to have them, but they had 50 acres, so I don't remember their sounds at all.
well, i just recalled you said you only have two acres, so it may not be a good idea, esp if neighbors are close. i think their sounds are beautiful, but to each his own. you only need about one guinea per acre for insect control. and even if you only had four, that does not constitute a flock, they could get lonely and leave...
but ask on the guinea forum and see what they say...
Guineas are not for everyone, their call can be annoying to some. It really depends on how rural you are and what your neighbors are like. Everyone here has something that barks, nays, whineys or moos so no one says anything. My neighbor across the road says he is going to start putting out corn to fatten them up and then have me over for sunday dinner! LOL He is only kidding! He swears its only one of them that taunts him! His wife would kill him literally for harming anything but a mouse or squirrel and those have to have chewed into the house. Mine haven't gone over to his house yet and if they do then they will be locked up and retrained. They still like any other poultry will need a draft free secure place to roost at night, coop, barn etc or else they will not last long at all. Everyone has losses even when they are in at night its just a fact of keep poultry, without a safe place against weather and predators they won't last long. So you will still have let them out in the morning and locked them up after dark.
We have a pair of peacocks and I would not recommend them for gardening. They are pretty large and eat minimal bugs--mine prefer mostly grain and plants. They are also very loud during breeding season but beautiful. I wouldn't recommend chickens either if you have vegetables. I have some that fly out of their yards and go straight to the garden to eat the veggies and flowers. I had to clip wings on several of them to keep them inside of their fence to keep them from pecking holes in the tomatoes. Go for guineas or geese.
you can raise geese to be pets and not be mean. and you need less of them than guineas, and they are easier to pick up at a feed store...
I recommend guineas or peacocks. Mine were all great and so much fun. They did not damage the plantings. Do NOT get geese unless you pen them. Mine ate everything including the apple trees!
Wow those must have been big hungry geese!
hey they were pretty cool until they ate everything. Nice boys very friendly and they were in love with my cement goose! You gotta wonder what they thought about the quiet girl!
Well I am hoping.. fingers, legs and everything else crossed here..
That my silkie Chicks will assist me in gardening this year. I do not intend to allow then free reign of the gardens.. and also not tractor them, but when I am working in my fenced pool garden area 1 or 2 of them will have a treat couple of hours here and there to assist me.
Now ya'll can jump in here and crush my dreams, but I am thinking, there shouldn't be too much damage with monitored bug eating..
Fran
I've found that my bantums don't bother my gardens but the full sized girls really
like to root around in them. Hard to keep them mulched.
Guinea hens are easier care (mine even roosted in trees) but they drove my DH
crazy with their noise plus they loved coming on the deck and knocking at the door.
I guess they like to see their reflection in the glass.
I have an acre and 8 guineas I love them and they don't eat my plants at all but my husband hates their noises. no bugs though
Yes - those guineas never bothered any of my plants or garden beds.
They would follow me when I mowed the fields too - eating bugs. I really
did enjoy them but DH would kill me if I got them again.
Anybody notice a trend here? Female ears enjoyed their sounds, male ears couldn't stand them! Interesting!
MollyD
I really didn't enjoy their poop on the deck however.
Did you know you can tell the sex of the guinea fowl by their
sound? I couldn't figure out how to tell the boys from the girls
'til I found this out on a guinea website.
I saw it somewhere on the net but now I can't remember who made what sound.
MollyD
Isn't there a site that has actual recordings of the two sounds, male and female. I think someone (hint, hint) posted it a while ago.
Its easy, males have a one syllable call like Chi Chi Chi over and over again and loud! and females have a 2 syllable call that sounds like Buck-wheat Buck-wheat, my gals sound like Butt-crack Butt-crack and one sound like Step-up Step-up. Once you listen to them you can tell the difference.
yes, it is on the site i posted above! HINT HINT HINT...
:0)
Wow! Thanks for all the help. I am kind of sad about the peacocks. There are some people down the street with peacocks--started with 2 and they now have 6. It doesn't seem like they do much at all for them. They run all over our (semi-agricultural) neighborhood and the dogs that roam don't seem to bother them. They sleep in trees at night. But if they aren't going to be eating my bugs, then it's sort of a waste, although I think they're gorgeous and I love the sound they make.
I think MY husband would go nuts over a bird that is constantly making more noise than what a couple of ducks might make. Which is funny because he has a sinus problem that causes him to make WAY more noise than a herd of pugs every night! You know what they say, people don't like what reminds them of themselves...
I kind of really like ducks...why would someone recommend guinea fowl over ducks (or vice versa)? Which eats more bugs? Makes more noise? Is more likely to stray? Has more health problems? Takes more work to care for? I know these are a lot of questions but of course you don't have to answer them like that, or at all. I've really loved reading what everyone has said so far, and it has helped me (sadly) rule out peacocks, but I still am stuck between the other two!
I've never had ducks. A friend told me she loved her ducks but they all got eaten by the
wild life over the winter when the pond froze over. She said their eggs were absolutely
delicious.
I know you said no chickens, but I personally think the easiest poultry a person could ever own are Old English Game Bantams. I have had free rangers for many years. I actually have a rooster that was hatched in 1994. That's 14 years old! In the winter I feed them, but in the summer, they are 100% free range and do wonderful. We have very little problems with ticks, bugs, etc. They are small enough that they don't wreck the garden too. I can't say enough good things about them. If I only could have one type of poultry, these win hands down.
So MNKris--Do you have cats? My mother lives on my propery and lets her cat outside. Could a cat kill a bantam? Also, I am thinking "my" goshawk would probably be able to take a bantam. They are sounding pretty appealing for a chicken, though....thanks for complicating my choice! :)
No one's had both guineas and ducks to be able to compare?
Well I've had both bantum chickens and guineas. I agree the bantums are nicer all around.
They don't make the loud noises & poo all over my deck. They are very good survivors.
And my cats don't bother the chicks or grown chickens. Even newborn chicks are safe with
my cats. (And they are good mousers).
Well, my Blue Point Siamese and Bob Tail cats are scared silly by our bantam roosters. The only thing that has ever bothered them is our one weimaraner that thinks they are pheasants. She's always stalking them, but hasn't hurt any. The OEG roosters are very protective of their hens and they will jump a cat if it tries to attack. They don't seek out a fight, but they will protect against predators. You may lose a chick here and there to a cat if the hen isn't a good mother, but our OEGs protect their young so well, that we rarely lose a chick either.
Now, I know some bantams are a lot less protective, so you could have problems with more passive or slower breeds. OEGs can fly so that is also a consideration. For us, that is a good thing because they can get out of harms way easily.
I also have some Easter Egger Araucana bantams that are the same temperament as the OEGs so there are a few varieties out there that I know will work.
Thanks for all of that information! Now I need to look into bantams, too!
In my house, a rose breasted cockatoo named Sydney who weighs 300 grams rules the house! No one crosses her path! Cats, dogs and other birds fear her! She is 300 grams of pure EVIL! Blah ah ah ah ah ah!!!!! LOL Well, not really pure evil, she is just really attached to me, is loving your Mommy a crime?
I like the ducks and geese but some of them can do a lot of damage to crops like lettuce, mustard greens ,etc. They also seem to really like tomatoes. But so do chickens. I would only have bantams. We have red tail hawks and we haven't lost any fully grown bantams to them that I know of. We have lost a lot of pigeons to them tho. All our birds go into a very secure building at night. Right now I have what I was told is a Cornish baby chick. She is probably about a month old. She is my house chicken for the time being. I take her outside in the days when it is nice weather. Today she showed me that she will find her own way in and out of the house if I leave the door open.
I've had pet ducks, goose hen, and chickens who go to the garden with me. That is one of the best times in the garden.
Right now I have three cats PLUS three foster cats in the house, and 2 dogs. If I had a "house chicken" my husband would implode. I love my DH deeply but if I ever change my mind on that, I now know exactly what to do! ;-]
I usually have so many tomatoes I am trying to find ways to get rid of them, so feeding them to chickens would be just fine.
It's the "secure building" thing that really gets me. My cousin spends about an hour (or has my god sons spend an hour, because she is a wise woman) every day cleaning the chicken coop and collecting eggs. I really don't have a spare hour, which is why I was looking at free ranging birds like peacocks or guineas or ducks. Then MNKris said that Old English Game Bantams didn't need a coop except in the coldest part of winter, which got me thinking about them. Are other bantams as tough? Cleaning a chicken coop daily is not something I am wanting to embrace.
I clean out the stalls of my barn 1-2 times a year. They spend their days roaming
the property except during the cold months of winter. The floor is dirt and I pile up
straw and pine shavings pretty thick after cleaning out everything.
That sounds WAY more like it! Are yours OEG bantams too?
I don't know what kind of bantums they are. I got them from my cousin.
mudpiegirl, look up the deep litter method--you can have a dirt floor and only have to clean it out about twice a year--it becomes a whole ecosystem with fly parasites that keep the maggots down and you end up with compost--I am trying this year and so far so good. The only flies are in the rabbit hutch...........
We have a concrete floor and only have it cleaned once a year. In the spring. In fact the neighbor boy just cleaned it today. I use pine shavings in the summer and sometimes add leaves or more shavings in the winter. Didn't get the extra layer added this winter. I have him pile it on top of sheets of plastic where I leave it for a year. By then it is great compost. He just picks up one end of the plastic and pulls it until everything is in a pile on the other end. Then lays the plastic back down and speads the new cleanings on the plastic. I like the shavings because snakes don't. That has ended my snakes in the bird house problem. The peacock, Moses, would take care of most snakes in the yarden anyway.
I have 6 cats and 3 dogs too. All indoor/outdoor critters. But they all know the fastest way to get a beating and new address is to bother the poultry. Some have had to learn the hard way. We have baby chicks on the way and I do wonder what 2 of my cats will do when I let mother hen raise them free range. I had to get rid of one lovely cat last year because he wouldn't give up killing baby chickens and piegeons.
This message was edited May 2, 2008 11:42 PM
Ducks are the best! They are happy, busy,adorable little bug eaters. Whenever I am out in my flower gardens, I have at least two little pals accompanying me, "cultivating " the earth and devouring pesky grubs along the way. Ducks are friendly and funny but must have a constant source of water, We have a creek running through our property which keeps them happy. So when they are not swimming, they are eating japanese beetles, grasshoppers, and all other manner of garden pests.
I have never had ducks, but do have one Pied Guinea Fowl. Had a lovely pair a Lavender hen with my Pied Male, but neighbors dog got into my yard, and they live about 1/8 mile away, and killed the Lav. Guinea female and she had a nest with 30 eggs in it !!! also killed an older brown banty hen, auracana type.
I bought 2 more young Guinea Fowl as the Pied guy was very lonely. Different neighbors cats got into yard and scared the young guineas, never saw them again.
A different friend gave me three small black banties to keep my rooster and other older hen company., that was last fall. This spring one of the new young females hid her nest about 7 feet up in a vine and hatched 4 babies before I even knew where the nest was. She called them down at one day old and was a very protective mother, but during the second night the neighbors cat got into yard and killed the whole family. I was very sad. They were free ranging because very difficult to catch a banty used to free range. I neglected to say my 2 1/2 acre garden is completely fenced in with redwood fence and chicken wire. keeping deer out along with other four footed animals, But the darn cats can jump over the fence or have found crawl space under the chicken wire base fence.
When I first got the banties 7 or 8 years ago I bought a small storage building and converted it to a chicken house,. Last summer after I got the guineas we insulated the building and all the banties and the guineas were happy in it at night. I let them out for afternoons for bugging my garden.
The guinea is only noisy when there is something unusual that he sees. Very friendly and would love to come into my house.
I recommend either small banties or guineas for guard duty, and debugging your garden.
Donna S
Donna there isn't the fence made yet that can keep a cat out!
Condolences on your losses.
MollyD