Will my Peachick ever be "friendly"??

SlickChick76 said:

Hello, All!

This is my Peachick, Ashley, who was hatched on July 23rd and came to live with us on September 28th.

Ashley was 9 weeks old then, and from the first day, was very frightened of us. We tried to show as much love as possible, and I even had Ashley in my office on my lap for four hours a day for the first two weeks to try and socialize him/her and even held him/her while we sat on the couch and watched TV.



We felt awful that my two Red Star hens (hatched 6/4) were being mean to Ashley, so we are now “fostering” 6 Red Star chicks that have been with us since hatch to keep him/her company.

At this point, will Ashley ever be “friendly”? He/she will come to eat some scrambled eggs from my hand, but becomes very stressed when we try and hold him/her. We handled our Red Stars every day from hatch, and they are very well socialized. We are in the process of completing our coop and run, and my fear is that when Ashley is introduced into a 50’l x 12’w x 9’h run, that he/she will do everything to avoid us…

I should be getting the results of Ashley’s DNA test any day now, and am anxious to find out Ashley’s sex so that I can get him/her an appropriate companion when Peachicks become available. I will make it a point to get a newly hatched Peachick so the baby can imprint on us, but I don’t want to give up on socializing Ashley if I have the chance.

Any thoughts, ideas and input would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you,
Danielle

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SlickChick76 said:

Thank you so much, Birdrain92 for taking the time to reply, and giving me hope that Ashley will become friendly with the right training.

To answer your question, yes, I clipped Ashley's wings!
I should be getting the results of the DNA test any day now, and am anxious to find out what Ashley is. Considering how nurturing and patient Ashley is with the chicks, I would guess a "she", but honestly, I don't know enough about Peafowl, and for all I know, it is normal for them to be good natured and gentle. (So, for the sake of not writing he/she to refer to Ashley going forward, I will say "she", until the results come in!)

As far as how I handle Ashley, I use my 25+ years of experience with socializing feral cats and kittens, and working with frightened animals in general: calm, supportive handling while speaking softly and holding her close to my body. It saddens me that she becomes so frightened when trying to hold her- I have her in a confined area for the time being, and when I do go to grab her, she tries to get away and makes these nervous sounds, and then when I do grab her, she struggles for a few minutes before she calms down. This is what I was referring to when I said she becomes stressed. She readily will come to eat from my hand when offered her favorite treat of scrambled eggs, so I reward her while holding her after she calms down. I think I am on the right track; I guess my biggest concern is would it all eventually pay off...

Any other advice is very much appreciated!
danielle

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Birdrain92 said:

Peafowl are social birds and prefer to have friends. Clipping the secondary feathers won't do much help. Secondary feathers is what birds use to maintain height. The primaries is what you need to clip to prevent flight, primary feathers are for take off. To clip the wings clip the primaries to the same length as the axle feather. If you don't clip far enough down it does nothing for you. Cut to short the bird will bleed. The axle feather is the small feather that separates the primaries from the secondary feathers. There's only one axle feather per wing, and it looks like a primary but smaller than the secondary and primary feathers. With clipping wings you have to clip the wings every time they get new wing feathers in.

What I meant by how are you picking her up was, do you grab the legs and then lift her, lift her by placing your hand under lifting her by the sternum, rub your arm up against the breast to signal to them to perch on your arm? They prefer to perch on something. Perching tends to give them the feeling of safety. That's why I work so hard on perching my peafowl on my arm to get them tame and have them perched to keep them tame. The nervous sound is usually a single cluck sound. If there's a honk it's more of alert call. It takes a while to stress them out and they recover fast but don't try to stress out a young bird since they don't have the best immune system. Once they perch on something they calm down a lot.

Eventually your work will pay off. My Spalding peahen was the only peafowl I've had from chick til now. She was the easiest to get tame. My other peafowl I didn't get til they were a year old took more consistent work. When working with them I do it that if they work easier and behave they don't have to work as long for training. There's hope. The big Indian Blue on my arm I didn't get tame until this month and he's 5 years old and has never been worked with until mid September of this year. If you do things right they will bond quickly.

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JackieChickpeas said:

This is such useful advice.
I have 3 peachicks at the moment (not by choice they literally arrived on my patio without their Mum - spent a few days looking for their Mum but she is a no show. She must have died? These peacocks are all wild - they come into our property from the mountains). 7 weeks on we are still looking after the sweet little ones.
This morning I noted the one chick had poop on her under feathers (one of her siblings pooped on her while she was under their perch eating) so gently removed with a wet cloth. She quietly sat on my arm while I cleaned it away - not once cheeping or stressing.
When I let the 3 out into the garden so they could run about for the day (I only bring them indoors at nights) I noticed she was very subdued and is losing the other two when rummaging about (and she is usually the perkiest of the three). I so hope I have not stressed her out terribly that she is going to suffer for this and get ill
I have left them to do their thing outdoors in the hopes that she will eventually relax and perk up like normal.
So much stress.

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