Kerry Bernal Coates

Hello, we started with only three guinea fowl last year and love them to bits, so few I don't hace to think about eating them yet! Yes aggressive to chickens, but do coexist. Ours are completely free range and roost in tree above the chickshaw. They have not attacked the vegetable patch but I have heard of tat happening occasionally with a bigger group, so fencing in your valuables might be a good idea. We feed them some chicken feed at night. The nesting is an issue as we would like to eat the eggs as welll. When one did go broody last year we tried to move the eggs to a safer place but no joy. This year I plan to fence around her to keep out the mongoose around here as well as the dog. If they eat ticks, I haven't noticed but the locusts are less here and I am convinced they keep the rats on their toes.

We have been told that rats pass on information to their offspring so a trap only works ONCE for each 'family'.
Also they can smell rat urine on rat traps and avoid them. We were told to live trap and drown to avoid the traces of smell.
Even so the trap itself would become ineffective with time as they LEARN.

More and more people are suggests dogs. the bodeguero a breed trained to kill rats in spanish wine cellars or the Polish ratter. Latter looks like those cute pooch dogs people carry around in bags but have seen them and are incredibly domminating for miniature size.