How to raise guinea fowl?

Guinea fowl was originally a wild bird in Africa, and then it was domesticated and raised in China to become a breeding breed. Many people are not very familiar with some of the living habits of guinea fowl, so they do not know how to raise them. In order to raise guinea fowl well, we must master the main points of raising guinea fowl breeds, and understand their growth cycle, disease prevention and control of common diseases. The following is the editor to share with you the breeding points of guinea fowl, after reading it, you will initially understand how to raise guinea fowl.

The breed of guinea fowl

First of all, let's take a look at the breeds of guinea fowl. There are three main types of guinea fowl: first, the "big guinea fowl" distributed in Somalia and Tanzania, which is mainly characterized by only a few feathers on its back. The second is the "crested guinea fowl" distributed in the tropical forests of Africa. The third is "gray-capped guinea fowl", which includes two types with blue meat beard and red meat beard.

The growth cycle of guinea fowl

The laying period of guinea fowl is 26-66 weeks old, the laying rate of 32-week-old guinea fowl can reach 50%, and the laying peak is reached at 35 weeks old, and the breeder rooster can only produce qualified semen at the age of 32 weeks. It was transferred to the laying house at the age of about 25 weeks.

The living habits of guinea fowl

1. Adaptability

Adult guinea fowl has strong adaptability, like dry and dislike, high temperature resistance, cold resistance and disease resistance. It can still live at-20-40 ℃. However, if the temperature of the chick after coming out of the shell is slightly lower, it is easy to catch cold, diarrhea or death.

2. Timid and easily frightened

The guinea fowl still retains the characteristics of wild birds. The guinea fowl is gentle, timid and alert. Any abnormality or movement in the environment can cause the whole flock to panic. The hens make harsh calls, and the chickens will have a chain reaction and bark one after another. If the red drinking fountain is replaced with a yellow drinking fountain, the chickens will be afraid to go near the drinking fountain for a long time.

3. Gregariousness and homing

Guinea fowl usually live together in groups of 30 to 50, never separate. After artificial domestication, they still like group activities, and they also flee and hide in groups when they are frightened, so guinea fowls are suitable for raising in large groups. In addition, guinea fowl has a strong homing property. When they return to their nests in the evening, they often go back to their houses, and occasionally they can return to the group to return to their nests.

4. Be good at flying and love climbing

Guinea fowl has strong wings and has a certain leap ability at the age of 1 day. I can walk almost constantly throughout the day. Love to climb high places at rest or at night.

5. Like to take a sand bath and like to sing

Guinea fowl scattered on the soil ground, often dig a pit on the ground to provide themselves with sand bath conditions. When taking a sand bath, spread the sand evenly between the feathers and the skin. The shrill sound of a guinea fowl with rhythm and continuity is actually a major feature, which greatly interferes with people's rest, but it also has several functions: one is that the strong sound at night can serve as an alarm, and the other is that once the sound decreases, or once the sound intensity weakens, it may be a sign of disease.

6. Mate selection

Guinea fowl is selective to the opposite sex, which is one of the reasons for the low fertilization rate of chickens during natural mating. Of course, easy to be frightened is also the main reason for the low fertilization rate of large flocks of guinea flocks. But the use of artificial insemination can fundamentally solve the problem of low fertilization rate.

7. Wide diet and tolerance to rough feeding

Especially like grass, vegetables, leaves, fruits and other green plants. General cereals, bran, cakes, fishbone meal and so on can be used for consumption.

Disease prevention and treatment of guinea fowl

Guinea fowl is a kind of poultry, which has strong disease resistance and relatively low morbidity and mortality. However, with the rapid development of poultry industry and the continuous expansion of breeding scale and quantity, many diseases also follow and tend to be complex and diversified. In particular, there is no effective treatment for some diseases. Prevention and treatment of guinea fowl disease should adhere to "prevention first, breeding and prevention". Only in this way can we ensure that guinea fowl production can achieve "low risk and high benefit".

As far as the pearl chicken farm is concerned, the measures to prevent disease are mainly considered from three aspects: the first is how to prevent pathogens from entering the chicken farm, the second is how to eliminate the pathogens that already exist in the chicken farm, and the third is how to improve the chicken's ability to resist disease.

Comprehensive health and epidemic prevention measures in order to make chickens grow healthily, reduce and prevent diseases, comprehensive health and epidemic prevention measures must be taken for chickens.

Prevention and treatment of common diseases in guinea fowl

1. Newcastle disease

It is an acute septic infectious disease caused by virus. The disease occurs regardless of age and season. The virulent type has acute morbidity and high mortality. The poisoned type does great harm to the young chickens, while the attenuated type does not cause death.

Symptoms: chickens often have sudden onset, loose feathers, head and neck contraction, drooping wings, blue or purple meat cones, open mouth breathing or breathing difficulties, often making a special "grunt" sound, crop is full of smelly liquid, inverted lift often flows out of the mouth, diarrhea, yellow-green or gray-white foul-smelling thin feces, some diseased chickens have neurological symptoms, such as leg and wing paralysis, walking or standing instability. Head and neck leaned back or twisted to one side, and finally paralyzed to death. Postmortem examination showed glandular stomach, small intestine and other mucosal and serous bleeding.

Prevention and treatment: the use of drug treatment is ineffective when the disease occurs, but it will be delayed. Anti-Newcastle disease serum can be tried 3 days before the onset of the disease. The diseased chickens in the middle and later stages should be eliminated, buried deeply or treated at high temperature. Only a small number of infected chickens or other uninfected chickens can be urgently vaccinated with Ⅰ or Ⅱ attenuated vaccine. After the occurrence of the disease, the sale of chickens and the entry and exit of personnel should be prohibited. Chicken sheds and appliances can be sprayed with 0.2%-0.4% bromogeramine solution, and the means of transport can be disinfected with 1%-2% caustic soda solution. At ordinary times, taking comprehensive prevention and control measures is the key to prevent the disease. Newcastle disease oil vaccine can be injected at 12-day-old, 40-day-old and 120-day-old. Newly introduced chickens must be raised separately for more than 2 weeks and vaccinated on time, and the sanitary disinfection of the chicken house should be strengthened at ordinary times.

2. Infectious bursal disease

Bursa of Fabricius, also known as supraluminal bursa, is a unique immune organ of birds, located above the cloaca. This disease is a special disease caused by virus that damages the bursa of Fabricius in chickens. The direct fatality rate of the disease is not high, but due to the damage of bursa of Fabricius and the decrease of immune function, it is seriously secondary to Newcastle disease and other infectious diseases, resulting in great losses.

Symptoms: there is no obvious seasonality in the occurrence of the disease, and chickens at the age of 3 to 5 weeks are susceptible. The sick chicken was depressed in spirit, increased in drinking water, greatly decreased in appetite, dishevelled feathers, lethargy with closed eyes, white watery feces, feces stained with feathers around the anus, wobbly gait, trembling, weakness and death, and emaciated and slow-growing undead chickens. Autopsy showed that the bursa of Fabricius was highly swollen at the initial stage and atrophied at the later stage, with edema, bleeding and creamy mucous secretion. There are bleeding spots in the mucosa at the junction of glandular stomach and myogastric stomach.

Prevention and treatment: the fundamental measure to prevent the disease is to strengthen feeding management and carry out timely immunization injection according to the requirements of immunization procedures. The attenuated vaccine of bursa of Fabricius can be inoculated once at the age of 18 days and 28 days respectively, and the breeder chickens can be injected with oil vaccine of bursa of Fabricius once at 18-20 weeks of age. When this disease occurs, you can try the high immune serum of bursa of Fabricius or the injection of high immune yolk antibody, and you can also use traditional Chinese medicine preparations such as "Guan sac Powder". At the same time, strengthen the care of sick chickens, add a variety of vitamins and so on.

Having said so much, we must understand what problems we should pay attention to in raising guinea fowl, right? How to raise guinea fowl cannot be clearly explained in one or two words, and we must accumulate experience in practice. Guinea fowl is not raised for a long time, many farmers have no experience, often can not achieve the desired feeding effect, at this time it is necessary to learn breeding skills. Guinea fowl as a kind of special meat poultry has high economic value, so it should be managed reasonably and raised carefully in order to bring you good economic benefits.