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Guinea fowl has not yet become a completely ordinary bird in private backyards, and the exotic species and African origin of the bird suggest that the guinea fowl needs some kind of unusual, special food. In fact, in terms of diet, guinea fowl does not differ from chicken. Food for guinea fowls, as well as food for chickens, should consist of cereals, animal and vegetable protein, minerals, vitamins and trace elements.
Since almost all parameters in guinea fowls and chickens are the same, the owners do not worry about what to feed the guinea fowls and calmly feed them with ordinary chicken feed. But in this case, it must be borne in mind that it is better not to give guinea fowls food intended for broiler chickens... It will not harm them, but the birds will gain fat, which, in theory, guinea fowls should not have.
The only difference between guinea fowls and chickens is the laying season. Chickens, especially egg breeds, can lay all year round and their diet is almost the same throughout the year. In summer, chickens are given grass, and in winter, finely chopped juicy feed. At home, guinea fowls feed on dry grain and insects in summer, but in captivity, guinea fowls, like chickens, can be given grass in summer and juicy food in winter.
Guinea fowls rush seasonally. As a rule, birds begin to lay their first eggs in the last days of February. But in the Caesars, the fertilization instinct is activated from mid-March, when daylight hours are no less than 14 hours, and the air temperature is above 17 ° C, so the first eggs in guinea fowls are usually unfertilized.
The mechanism here is quite simple. Birds lay eggs in batches. Usually, each batch is "calculated" for a month. Fertilization of eggs occurs at the stage of the formation of a future batch of eggs. That is, the February-March eggs in guinea fowls began to form in late January - early February, when the males were still inactive. The next batch, which the birds will begin to lay in April, will have time for the Caesars to fertilize. Therefore, collecting eggs for breeding should begin in April, and feeding, preparing for egg-laying, should be started in February. Even better since the beginning of winter.
Experienced livestock and poultry breeders have a principle: if you don't know what to do, do it as in nature. In nature, the guinea fowl lives in North Africa, where the growing season begins with the onset of the rainy season. The rains start in October and end in March-April. Throughout the winter, wild guinea fowls eat green grass and awakened snails, providing themselves with vitamins and reserves of calcium and animal protein for future egg-laying. Moreover, most often the air temperature in winter is +10 during the day and +7 at night. Showers add coolness.
When keeping a guinea fowl in a poultry house, the bird's rhythm is disturbed due to artificial lighting and too high air temperature, therefore, in guinea fowls, the egg-laying cycle begins ahead of time, while the guinea fowls are not so dependent on external conditions and have retained "wild" habits.
In winter, it is better to bring the guinea fowl's diet as close as possible to the diet of its wild ancestors.
Guinea fowl diet in winter
Feeding guinea fowls at home, of course, will be different from the "wild" option. In Russia, in winter, there is nowhere to get green grass and snails, so these ingredients in the diet of guinea fowls will have to be replaced with juicy feed, dairy products and meat waste.
How to replace the grass
Instead of grass, guinea fowls will happily eat finely chopped fresh cabbage, carrots, and beets. You can give the birds vegetable waste from the kitchen table. In addition to vegetables, birds should be given germinated wheat and oats. These ingredients are especially important because cereal grasses and are the main food of wild birds.
In the homeland of guinea fowls, wild oats, bluegrass, wild oats and other cereals grow. There is also millet - also a native of Africa. Therefore, all this germinated grain can and should be given to birds in winter.
From "domestic products" you can give the guinea fowl finely chopped needles, rich in vitamin C in winter.
In spring, with the beginning of the growth of young needles in coniferous trees, the concentration of essential oils that are dangerous to animals increases. Therefore, needles are given only in winter.
Sometimes you can stumble upon such diet tables.
In general, the diet is not bad if you know about the properties of needles and exclude it from the guinea fowl's diet in time, replacing it with germinated grain and the first spring greens.
It is not necessary to chop the grass into feed. It is enough to tie the plants into a broom and hang them within the reach of the birds. Then all that remains is to throw out the rough, inedible stems.
Another undesirable element in the diet of guinea fowl: fishmeal. It is undesirable only for those who will eat the guinea fowl that received this flour. But it is good for the bird. Therefore, it can and should be given to layers.
Grain and compound feed
To provide guinea fowls with vegetable protein, legumes can be added to the specified grain, in which there is little protein, but a lot of carbohydrates. Usually birds are fed cheap soybeans, but if someone is wary of genetically modified feed, then soybeans can be replaced with peas, lentils or beans.
All concentrates, especially legumes and corn, are crushed and mixed before use. Guinea fowls are given the same rate as chickens. A laying hen weighing 1.5 kg requires 100 - 120 g of grain feed. Guinea fowls weigh more, and the rate for these birds is increased in proportion to their weight. If a broiler guinea fowl and weighs about 3 kg, then the poultry should receive about 200 g of compound feed. Weight control is carried out tactilely. In the case of obesity, the rate of grain feed is cut, without depriving the birds of green feed.
How to replace natural protein
In the conditions of central Russia, snails and locusts familiar to guinea fowls can be replaced with:
- meat and bone or fish meal;
- finely chopped meat cuts;
- fish offal;
- cottage cheese;
- fermented milk whey, which can be used instead of water when preparing wet mash.
Therefore, if you give the guinea fowls dairy feed in summer, then with the expectation that the birds eat them immediately, without leaving them for several hours.
Fishmeal or fish offal are bad because poultry meat acquires a distinct fishy smell. It is better not to give this feed to livestock intended for slaughter.
Mineral dressings and vitamins
Vitamins should normally be present in feed. It is usually not necessary to specially add, especially if the birds receive factory compound feed for layers.
To provide the guinea fowls with calcium, a container with shells is placed in the aviary. You can mix feed chalk into the feed, but in small quantities, as the chalk can stick together into lumps and clog the intestines of the bird. Guinea fowl shells themselves will eat as much as they need.
They also put a trough with sand for the guinea fowl, from which the birds peck out pebbles and bathe.
Summer diet
In summer, free-range guinea fowls can find animal squirrels for themselves by eating insects and worms.
When keeping a guinea fowl in an aviary, the bird does not have the opportunity to provide itself with animal feed, and it is difficult to manually collect natural feed for them in summer in Russia.Therefore, in the compound feed for guinea fowls, you will have to mix meat and bone meal or give minced fish.
Experienced poultry farmers provide poultry with fresh animal protein, specially breeding maggots. If neighbors are not inclined to write complaints, then you can use these tips:
- pour the oatmeal broth onto a piece of turf. The birds will eat the oatmeal itself, and the flies will lay eggs on the remaining mucus;
- pour the remnants of the fish soup onto the same piece of turf. Maggots will start even faster.
Guinea fowls are fed 2 - 3 times a day. Concentrates are usually given in the morning and evening. During the day, the birds are fed grass and wet mash.
Raising guinea fowl chicks
In nature, caesarians are born during a period of drought, when food contains only fallen seeds of cereals, ants and all the same small white snails. The Caesarians cannot catch flies and locusts in the first days of their lives.
The first day after hatching, the guinea fowl does not eat. On the second day, the chicks can be offered starter feed for chicks or quail. You can make food for the guinea fowl yourself. Unfortunately, there are very few videos on the network about guinea fowls in general, and about feeding chicks in particular.
The video indicates that food for the quail mixed with the yolk is prepared for the guinea fowl in the feeder. This is a big mistake. A boiled egg has enough moisture to soak the feed. The soaked compound feed turns sour very quickly. As a result, the chicks get an upset stomach, and the owners are convinced that for several days the chicks should be given potassium permanganate and finely chopped green onions should be given to them "for disinfection." Although there is nothing to disinfect in the intestines, you can easily burn the delicate intestinal mucosa of a newborn chick with a burning onion. Chicks are born sterile. If the egg was infected while still in the bird or the chick caught the infection in the incubator, then potassium permanganate and onions will not help. A course of antibiotics is required if indicated.
Egg and feed must be separated into different containers. Moreover, the egg also quickly deteriorates and it is necessary to be able to remove it without affecting the feed. The guinea fowl himself will find and eat what he needs at the moment.
Grown up guinea pigs, compound feed for quail plus grass with an egg:
As a green food, which is permissible to mix with an egg, it is better to take not green onions, but specially grown sprouts of wheat, oats or barley at the time of hatching of the chicks.
An attempt to feed a newborn guinea fowl by tapping a finger on the stern is a pointless exercise, since on the first day the chick still does not eat, and on the second, most likely, he will have time to find a feeder himself. In general, you don't need to feed the chicks. They need to ensure constant and free access to feed. A guinea fowl that refuses to feed is most likely to have a developmental pathology and will not survive, even if it is force-fed.
An old recipe for chick food: boiled millet plus a boiled egg.
In general, feeding and caring for small guinea fowls is the same as for chickens. Weekly guinea fowls can already be gradually transferred to feed for adult birds. It is better to mix starter feed for chicks and compound feed for adult birds first, since chicks may not understand that large granules are edible. While rummaging in compound feed, the Caesars will gradually get used to eating large granules of "adult" feed.
Experienced poultry farmers engaged in breeding purebred poultry argue that the trouble with guinea fowls is no more, but not less than with those breeds of chickens that are deprived of the instinct of incubation. Therefore, if a beginner is not afraid of the need to incubate guinea fowl eggs, he can safely start this original bird.
