🦃🐦Birds of a Feather: Why Guinea Hens and Turkeys Are Better Together!

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October 11, 2023

Welcome to the latest edition of the CT Ranch newsletter, where we are sharing our tales of adventure with our feathered friends. Today, we're talking about the fascinating world of guinea hens and turkeys!

Now, we know that not everyone is a fan of guinea hens, but we sure love ours!

The Unlikely Family

When we first got guinea hens, they did what guinea hens do best - they wandered off and became wild. But we were lucky - most of them stuck around on the outskirts of the farm and roosted in our trees.

However, round two was a different story. We just so happened to get our second batch of guineas and turkeys at the same time, and boy, were we in for a surprise! One of the turkey babies took the guinea babies under her wing (literally) and now they follow her like a mama. It's like we have our own version of The Ugly Duckling! Thanks to this little life hack, the second batch of guineas stays close to home. The loose ones from our first batch roost in trees while the ones with turkeys roost in the coop.

(Picture: Turkey and Guinea's when they were babies)

(Picture: Turkey and Guineas now all grown up.)

Pro Tip: If you're looking to raise guinea hens, try getting turkeys at the same time to help them stick around!

But Why Guinea Hens?

Now, we know you might be wondering why we bother with guinea hens. Well, let us tell you -

1. These birds are nature's alarm system! If guineas are squawking, there's definitely something going on.

2. They also keep snakes at bay, which is pretty important when you live in Texas.

3. They eat 100-1000's of ticks a day (seriously, look up the statistics!).

An Accidental Delicacy
A while ago we kept coming across some eggs from “our chickens” that were quite hard to crack open and smaller in size than usual. Assuming they were chicken eggs, we went ahead and ate them, they tasted fine so we kept on eating them.

We wondered what kind of chicken is laying these little rock hard eggs!? Upon further investigation, we discovered that they were actually guinea eggs! The moral of the story is that guinea eggs are edible and have a similar taste to chicken eggs, but they are much harder to crack open, so be prepared to use some muscle!

And I know NOW you may be wondering, DO YOU SELL GUINEA HEN EGGS?!? And the answer is no, unfortunately they are just too hard to come by to keep any real amount in stock. But we are happy to offer our pasture raised chicken eggs from CT Ranch!