The Giant African Land Snail. The Nigerian Dwarf Goat. If you've been following along here, you know that these two mini-livestock species have enormous potential to help Africans transform their backyard market gardens into livelihoods. Now Emeka adds another species to the African small farm all-star team -- the Guinea Fowl, which "thrives under semi-intensive conditions, forages well, and requires little attention. It retains many of its wild ancestor's survival characteristics: it grows, reproduces, and yields well in both cool and hot conditions; it is relatively disease-free; it requires little water or attention; it is almost as easily raised as chickens and turkeys; and it is a most useful all-round farm bird..."

We have guineas here in Massachusetts. We love them. They eat ticks voraciously, and all kinds of other bugd. They don't dig into the garden nearly as much as chickens do, and their eggs are tasty.

If you want to keep them, though, some things to know. They will travel, to your neighbors back yard, or whatever. They love to hang out on roadways at certain times of day because of the bugs there. They can be quite noisy, again, a neighbor issue.

But they are so entertaining we often have our coffee outside in the morning to watch them after we let them out for the day.

Chhers,

Don

Posted by: Don on May 25, 2006 5:33 AM