We introduced the Guinea fowl to mealworms – to more closely match their natural diet – they were very skeptical to start with but jump on them now. We still have the six of them, which is a great result especially as there is a large fox on the farm roaming around in the daytime.
In early November we started topping up the food supply with some hay. It smelled fantastic! The flock must have thought so too as it had all gone in 24 hours.
Kangaroo – who just loves a cuddle!!! She leans in on you and maneuvers herself closer. She doesn’t have very many teeth left so we are topping her food up with a muesli molasses mix designed for rams but a bit easier to chomp through than pellets if you don’t have many teeth.
The feeding time routine with the Guinea Fowl:
- They usually find themselves on the wrong side of the fence in with the sheep and there is much running up and down while I put the food down.
- Two of the Guinea fowl are small enough to hop through the holes in the metal fence which leads to great consternation as they don’t like to be separated as a flock.
- Finally, one of the remaining birds figures out he must fly across the fence and once one goes, they all go. Dinner is served.
Everyone is over at the hay feeder except Skinny Minnie (no longer so skinny) she is hanging out by the gate hoovering up any pellets that may have been dropped. And yes that is a double cab pickup in the background and yes that will have to go following the budget.
The naughty boys – Baby Lamb (the monster that is now bottom right), Pecky (1 ear), Twiglet and at the back Champion. All with bloody heads from head butting. 52 – on the left has had nothing to do with it – he is underweight and nowhere near as robust so he probably kept out of it. The bloodiest head by far was Twiglet – the youngster so I imagine he keeps starting it. It is that time of year when rams would be competing for females. Lambing on 1 April conveniently counts back to date night being Guy Fawkes. There is an old adage ‘in with a bang and out like fools’.
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