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I've had guinea fowl last year for the exact purposes you're suggesting. They are good buggers. So are muscovy ducks. I'm not so sure how good guineas are on flies. I always saw them snapping down low. Even up close, I never saw the bug they snapped at. The muscovies would hunt higher in the air, and I frequently saw the bugs they were going after. If you don't cage them so they learn where home is, they just take off when you let them out. As for roaming, mine would go out the better part of a mile. Contrary to the strange comments given, they get taken quite frequently by predators, including dogs. Especially at night. While chickens turn off when the sun goes down, guinneas lose their minds and go completely insane. Where they go, they poop. And they will go into your lawn. If it's fenced, they will fly over the fence into your lawn, and then scream along the fence waiting for you to open the gate to let them back out. They will not attack dogs children or other things. They are more feral than domestic, and as such are quite skittish. They are combative only with other poultry, and that's not that common really. Don't discount the noise. The din they make is incredible. When I slaughtered mine in the fall the volume of silence that decended was incredible. For that reason, and only that reason, I chose not to do guineas again.
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