Farming Friends

Female guinea fowl can start laying as early as 16 weeks old. If they reach 16 weeks in the Autumn and Winter months then they usually start to lay in the following Spring.

In the UK guinea fowl tend to lay between March and September.

They are ground nesting birds and will dig out a bit of a hole in the undergrowth and then start to lay they often share a nest.

Finding the nest can sometimes be hard so observing the birds and watching for males hovering near a patch of nettles in the laying season may be a sign that a nest is not too far away.

Ingredients

• 1 or 2 salmon fillets grilled
• 8 quail eggs hard boiled
• 1 ripe avocado
• 4 to 6 cherry tomatoes
• one quarter of a cucumber
• 1 little gem lettuce
• 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
• pinenuts

Method

1. Grill the salmon, cool and flake.
2. Hard boil the quail eggs for 3 minutes, then cool, peel and cut in half.
3. Cut the avocado in half, peel and chop.
4. Shred the lettuce.
5. Cut the tomatoes in half.
6. Cut the cucumber into small pieces.
7. Add all the ingredients to a salad bowl with the pinenuts and balsamic vinegar.
8. Toss the salad so that the ingredients are mixed.

An excellent salad which can be served as a light lunch or as an accompaniment to jacket potatoes, pizza or sandwiches.

Here is Snuffles the hand reared Saddleback piglet that was injured when my Saddleback sow Lacy was farrowing.

Snuffles and I are developing a relationship as I hand rear him. He climbs onto my lap as I give him his milk every few hours or so.

I just hope that I can give him enough milk to help him grow strong. The poor little piglet has a punctured face which makes breathing difficult and a tongue that is cut which makes suckling difficult.

I will keep you posted about the piglets progress.

One of the Saddleback piglets is injured, infact during farrowing the sow bit the piglet and punctured the piglet’s face and tongue making it difficult for the piglet to breathe and suckle.

I have named the piglet Snuffles as he is breathing heavily. He was born on Monday and is nearly two days old. He has been finding it hard to suckle although he makes attempts to get the sows milk and wants to be with the other piglets.

I have been supplementing Snuffles suckling with some calf milk every few hours. Before lunch he drank a fair bit of calf milk and then started to suckle the sow so this is a great sign. Fingers crossed for a full recovery and the ability to suckle properly so I don’t have to hand rear the poor little piglet.

Yesterday Lacy, my Saddleback sow farrowed 9 piglets. I would like to say that it was plain sailing but it wasn’t.

Lacy is a lovely sow and is never aggressive towards humans. She will dominate Cagney, her sister when it comes to feeding time and will often take a bite at Cagney but apart from that Lacy is a very good pig to deal with, that is until it comes to farrowing.

This was Lacy’s third litter and I am delighted to say that she had 9 healthy piglets, 7 gilts and 2 boars which is a great result.

When Lacy farrows she tends to become aggressive towards the piglets, which is not uncommon. At about 3.30pm yesterday she had her first piglet and soon followed a second and third. Infact everytime I turned round or went outside she seemed to have a piglet. All was going well and although I had got a box incase it was needed the three piglets were milling around quite happily. That is until Lacy took a swipe at the third piglet and bit him on the face, puncturing his face so that he is now breathing through the hole and slashing his tongue.
I managed to get all three piglets safely away from Lacy and promptly phoned the vet who said keep the piglet warm and give about 0.1ml of penstrep if you think it’s needed.

I wiped away blood which seemed to take forever and the poor little piglet was suffering from shock but miraculously has survived.

As the piglets were born I gathered them up into a box under the heat lamp. The numbers began to increase and the box became quite full, so I had to resort to two boxes. The containers are deep but one piglet, I think the first born was a determined little piglet and kept trying to jump out of the box and succeeding on a few occasions.

With the possibility of the piglets jumping out of the box and into the mouth of Lacy I was stranded in the farrowing barn, with 28 guinea fowl, 7 ducks and 17 hens free ranging outside as well as over 100 quail to check for feed and water and 8 other pigs to feed, all of which needed doing before nightfall. Hmm I was in a predicament.

My father-in-law came over to the farm to watch the piglets whilst I sorted the poultry and then it was back to piglet watch for me. By about 9pm Lacy had farrowed 9 piglets and was cleansing, a sign that farrowing has finished. Everytime I tried to place a piglet near Lacy she started to snap at it, yet everytime a piglet squealed she became concerned and when she tried to lay down she did so with caution so as not to sit on any piglets.

I waited a couple of hours for Lacy to calm down and then Steve and I decided that it would be best to release all the piglets into the farrowing pen and to try to keep them away from her mouth with a stick. When this happens there is an awful lot of grunting goes on and Lacy paces up and down the farrowing crate before settling down.

I was relieved that she didn’t attack any and I stayed whilst the piglets suckled. I also wanted to make sure that the poorly piglet suckled which it seemed to do.

Today all the piglets are well and Snuffles (the poorly piglet) is trying his hardest to suckle but I think he is having trouble breathing and sucking at the same time, so I am supplementing his feed every hour with a drop of warm calf milk.

I’ll keep you posted about Snuffles and the rest of the Saddleback piglets.

Kedgeree is a great way of eating fish and eggs.

Ingredients

• 1 and a half lb or 700g of fish (I like smoked mackeral)
• 3oz or 75g of butter
• 1 onion peeled and chopped
• 8 fl oz of long grain rice
• 1 pint cold water
• 1 teaspoon of curry powder
• 12 quail eggs hard boiled
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
• chopped parsley

Method

1. Hard boil the quail eggs for 3 minutes then leave to cool, peel and cut in half or chopped up.
2. Place the fish in a saucepan and cover with 1 pint of cold water and bring to the boil.
3. Add lid to fish pan and simmer gently for approximately 10 minutes.
4. Drain off the liquid into a measuring jug.
5. Place the fish in a oven proof dish and keep warm.
6. Peel and chop the onions.
7. Melt the butter in the empty fish pan and add the chopped onions and soften for about 5 minutes.
8. Stir in the curry powder.
9. Then stir in the rice and add 16fl oz of the fish cooking water.
10. Cover the pan and cook gently for 15 minutes until the rice grains are tender.
11. Remove the skins from the fish and flake the fish into small pieces.
12. Add the fish, quail eggs, parsley, lemon juice and 1 oz of butter.
13. Gently heat the pan for 5 minutes.
14. Serve the kedgeree on warmed plates.

Kedgeree can be served on it’s own, or as an alternative breakfast, or as a main meal with jacket potato, peas, salad or seasonal vegetables.

On a couple of occasions I have been asked about setting up a guinea fowl farm and guinea fowl breeding project. An excellent book for anyone thinking of raising or farming guinea fowl for the first time is Guinea Fowl Past & Present by Michael Roberts.

This book provides information about intensively rearing guinea fowl as well as free ranging guinea fowl and provides facts and figures such as these;

“Intensive indoor birds are kept for 2 months and their weight is approx 1.4 kilos or 3lbs. The free range birds are kept for about 3 months and reach a weight of approximately 1.9 kilos or 4lbs.”

However the Scottish Agricultural College website is also an excellent source of information about guinea fowl farming. This website states, “UK birds are killed at 9 weeks, when they have reached 1.75 - 2lb weight.”
The SAC also says that adlib feed works out at 4oz per adult guinea fowl.

If you would like to find out more about guinea fowl farming then please leave a comment or infact if you have experience of guinea fowl farming and breeding then it would be great to hear your experiences.