We had guinea hens when I was a child on the farm. They were so funny-looking and did such silly things as lay eggs when they were roosting in a tree. Back on the ground the hens would sometimes have a common nest with as many as 20 eggs, and they hid them well. As for maternal instinct, many times they simply abandoned the eggs and went off to find bugs or worms. The eggs made particularly good ammunition for bored children, and the older the eggs the better. I understand their meat is very tasty, but eating a guinea hen, I think, would be akin to eating a frog. And frogs aren’t in my diet.
Pearl was my rescued white guinea hen. A friend offered her to me. Her mates were bullying her and she needed a new home before she was picked naked. She got one with my hens who eyed her as an undesirable and left her alone. She was a force to be reckoned with. An extremely pushy gal she was. She looked like an antediluvian species of fowl, with a large white, puffy-speckled body and a tiny pointed head and red wattles. She didn’t cluck like a hen either, she made a high-pitched “peet-peet-peet!”.
At feeding time she’d be the first to burst out of the hen house to see if there were any leftover veggies, spaghetti or fruit. I liked to think I was special to her, but knew in my heart that I was merely a food source.
One day I arrived at feeding time and there wasn’t the usual wild rush and the frantic greeting of “peet-peet-peet.” Pearl had disappeared during the night. How she did it is a mystery, because her wing was clipped and aerodynamically it would have been impossible for her to fly. It would be like a plane flying with one and one-half wings. There were no sad piles of white feathers, no evidence of a break-in by any four-footed critters.
I’ve since learned that mature guinea fowl, if transplanted, will depart if left to their own devices. If they’re hatched in one place they’ll stay there. Also, if keets, (what baby guineas are called), are raised with baby chicks, they will learn to go into the hen house and roost there instead of looking for a perch in a tree or on top of a gate or fence.
In about another month a box will arrive at the Post Office emitting tiny peeps. The Post Office will call me and I’ll go pick up my peeps, bring them home, and begin to raise them in an old watering trough. There will be 6 Delaware Whites, 6 Blue Copper Marans, 7 Araucanas and 6 Barred Rocks. And as the icing on the cake, 4 white keets!
By Lynn Wait
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