Homestead Squab and Guinea Production

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Guinea hens will lay from 25 to 30 eggs before becoming broody, and if eggs are collected regularly, they may lay as many as 50 to 60 eggs during the laying season which usually runs from late April to late July. Some fanciers permit the guinea hens to set on their own eggs . . . however, by their wild nature they are poor nesters and poorer mothers. The eggs, therefore, should be set under either chicken or turkey hens and eggs should be sprinkled with warm water every four days. Guinea eggs may be successfully hatched in an artificial incubator, but guineas seem to do better when a hen is used.

Chicken hens will set on from 15 to 18 guinea eggs and turkey hens upwards from 20. The incubation period is about 26 days. As with ducks and geese, chicken hens must be confined to the nest after the first of the guineas begin to pip so as to give the late hatchers a chance to hatch before the hen leaves the nest.

After the guineas are from two to three weeks old they may be fed on cracked grains instead of mash and as they grow to eight weeks they may be fed whole grains to an advantage. They soon learn to roost and will do so in trees or on some man-made arrangements, and if they have been brooded by a chicken hen they may even be induced to roost in a chicken house. Young guineas become very attached to their foster mother and often will remain with her until they have become fully grown. This attachment is very helpful when one wants to catch the guineas for those raised in the wild state are most difficult to apprehend without the aid of a shotgun.

THE FINISHED PRODUCT

Guinea fowl are usually butchered at about three months of age when they should weigh from two to three pounds. At this size they make delicious broilers and if kept beyond this age their meat has a tendency to become tough. They are butchered much in the same manner as turkeys and will keep very well in deepfreeze units.

It is true that everyone who tries to raise guineas will not have the best of results for they do require considerable range and do better when they have natural cover such as found in river and creek bottoms, etc. It must always be remembered that they are still on the wild side of life and not every faun is suitable for their production.

But for those who like to experiment, and for those who do not object to having the birds run loose about the place, the guinea fowl will supply excellent food for the table. They are certainly worth trying and they require little care, no housing and very little feed beyond that which they will find for themselves.

Back in 1949—before factory farming and the "pump 'em full of chemicals" school of agriculture blitzed the countrya fellow named Jack Widmer wrote a little book called PRACTICAL ANIMAL HUSBANDRY. Now that manual wasn't what you'd call completely exhaustive, the writing style wasn't the best and a few of the ideas it advanced-such as confining laying hens in cages—were later refined into the kind of automated farming that so many of us are fighting against these days.

Still, PRACTICAL ANIMAL HUSBANDRY contained a good deal of basic information that today's "homesteaders" all too often need and don't know where to find. I'm pleased, then, that the publisher of the book, Charles Scribner's Sons, has granted me permission to reprint excerpts from this out-of-print manual. I think that many of my readers will find the following information both interesting and informative.—MOTHER.

Excerpts from PRACTICAL. ANIMAL HUSBANDRY by Jack Widmer are reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright 1949 by Charles Scribner's Sons.

A pair of squab at 24 days of age

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