Guineafowl might be short sighted, but with their twenty twenty hearing, they have the intelligence to clock when you might be after them. Here's the best way to catch a guineafowl.
Knowing how to catch a guineafowl is a useful skill for those who have the birds in garden or field. They can be notoriously difficult to wrangle, so it is worth seeking advice from The Field’s Country Queries on how best to catch a guineafowl.
As soon as you have made your handy trap, sit back with our other useful smallholder tips and wait for the bird to take the bait.
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Once you have caught your guineafowl and transported it home there are myriad recipes your can use – if the bird is not purely a decorative feature. Or the feathers make extremely fetching additions to a hat.
QUERY: I have been offered the chance to rehome four guineafowl but have to catch and collect them myself. Can you give me some advice?
SR, Suffolk
HOW TO CATCH A GUINEAFOWL
ANSWER:
Field readers recommend how to catch a Guineafowl.
Dr Mike Swan of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust offers the following advice.
“To catch a free-range guineafowl I would suggest using a pheasant catcher borrowed from a gamekeeper. This is basically a multi-catch cage trap based on the lobster-pot principle, with a funnel entrance. Simply set it out where the birds customarily feed and bait it with a sprinkle of corn, putting a few grains outside the entrance as well to show the way in. You can even pre-bait a site to get the birds used to feeding in a specific place. If the guineafowl seem suspicious of the catcher, lay it on its side near the feeding site so that it cannot catch. As the birds gain confidence you can feed progressively closer to draw them in.”