GUINEA FOWLS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 416, 2 November 1889, Page 3

GUINEA FOWLS.

Where hawks are plentiful and rapacious, as they are in many thinly populated districts of this colony, the following remarks concerning Guinea fowls are worth noting : " To anyone keeping a large number of hens a pair of Guineas is a good investment. I know from experience that they will and do keep the hawks away. Wo live right under the mountain (a favourite haunt of the hawks), but as long as our Guineas sun themselves on the barn and exercise their vocal powers in the yards the hawks prefer to swoop down upon the defenceless poultry yards of neighbours or lie in wait for unlucky rabbits. .Y. Once when our Guineas had a brood of young I saw the hen rise on wing andcliase a yellow-eyed monster who had designs on her young family. We have for several years past lost but one chicken by the hawke. *' Guineas make a great deal of noise, it must bo granted ; but one gets accustomed to it. And when they are absent it seems a& if one of the fitting parts of poultry-yard music were wanting. They do not on all occasions utter that screech, but seem to keep up a contented undertone of social conversation. They take great dislike to eomo poreons, and never see them, even at quite a distance, without shouting * Buckwheat ! Buckwheat !' One young man never appears in eight without thus being decried by our inhospitable birds until he declares that he believes our Guinea fowls never stop halloaing ; but they do as soon as he disappears. Their flesh is dark and unsaleable, but we prefer it to chicken or even duck's meat for picnic dinners. Eveiyone who has tasted o-trs believes in Guinea flesh at last, and I wish I could raise 100 of them. If you raise Guineas, however, my advise is?, do not o.vasperate them so as to feel their bills ; ib is nob comfortable."

Conscience differs in different persons and with some persons it makes no difference.