Mrs Down's Diary

Apparently , when young, guinea fowls are difficult to sex. From two months old, and ours must be about four months old by now, the females call with a different note and frequency to the male. Ours have not yet developed a musical repertoire. They twitter away to themselves, but nothing that I could definitely say was a distinguishable phrase.

Also they all look the same. When older, but how old I do not know, the males develop a bigger wattle, similar to the red cock's comb you see on a cockerel. None of ours have anything remotely like that yet.

I plan to enquire further to see if I can integrate a male guinea fowl into the flock in the summer. Perhaps even hatch off another clutch of eggs and see if any of them are male. I bought my last clutch of eggs off an on-line auction site, and although only half of the eggs hatched, I think that was more my unfamiliarity with hatching Guinea fowl eggs, than the fertility of the eggs being at fault.

The shells of Guinea fowl eggs are much harder than those of a hen's egg and take longer to hatch than hens eggs. Both in the number of days incubation and in the actual physical time to get out of the egg. John and I presumed last time that as only half the eggs had hatched under the bantam, that the remaining unhatched eggs must have been infertile.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette January 28