We have Chicks

We have new chicks in the house. We hatched a batch of Guinea eggs last week. I'll post pictures when I get around to downloading the camera. We keep guineas for eggs, but more importantly insect control. That last four or five years, we have seen ticks enter our area. Prior to about 1999, I had only seen one tick in this area and that was a wood tick. Around 2000, we started seeing gray dog ticks, and now we are seeing the dreaded black leg tick, carrier of Lyme Disease. Undoubtedly, there were som ticks out there in previous years, but there has been a dramatic increase in their population. And Guineas eat ticks.

I won't say that Guineas are 100% protection against ticks, but they do help a lot. We have a terrible problem with ticks in the back field where we do not have any guineas. But down here, around the house where the guineas free range, we rarely see ticks. I am planning to start a colony of guineas in the back field because I want to reduce the tick load we expose the goats to. Hence the Guinea Chicks.