I own a small flock of guineas. The nine of them make plenty of racket when alarmed. I can't imagine a hundred of them all shrieking together!

Better security than a flock of geese!

My mom had six, I absolutely hated them. Squawked at everything, and they would always get up on the back deck to do it, too... Then someone else's male guinea found my mom's hens and kept trying to lead them out of the back yard.

Mom also had six chickens, two roosters and three ducks (a male and two females). I never saw much financial sense in spending that much just to save on buying eggs from the store. She wound up having more eggs than she knew what to do with, so she gave them away to people at the church they went to. Never had much success with her chickens raising chicks to adulthood, though.

I think the guineas are hilarious, which helps me put up with the noise--these are a second generation, the original four having raised fourteen chicks (we've...lost some birds...) They've calmed down a lot, and only squawk at legitimate things, like hawks or my Chihuahua.

The also come when I call them, are trained to go into the coop on command, and make me laugh when they run with their fluffy little pantaloons flapping.

I've tried ducks and chickens. Duck eggs taste like mud. I like chickens, but I've had terrible luck with them--if they don't get killed by predators, they get waterbelly and die a slow, horrible death. And when they do lay eggs, you quickly get more eggs than you can ever use. I think I've gone off eating eggs because of this. I can't remember the last fried egg I've had--maybe it was that Egg McMuffin a few weeks ago.

I got the guineas after two suddenkly appeared in my yard--escaped from a neighbor, I guess--and I made friends with them. They were almost to the point of trusting me when a fox got them both. I then decided I really liked having guineas around.

The keets were adorable--little bipedal chipmunks. The two guinea hens laid several nests, but only one nest succeeded, mainly because I found it in time to build a cage around the setting hen.

Guineas certainly are one of those "either you love them or you hate them" creatures.

Only one kicked the buckeet...

*rimshot*

Actually, it's a "Hel"

"--meted Guineafowl." But of course that sort of pedantry doesn't matter to Sandy.