peacock as a indoor pet

jenbright9999 said:

Wow! Thank you for posting your experience in keeping a Peafowl indoors. I am very inspired!

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MinxFox said:

Do you have a backyard that you could build a pen for them in? At least you could have a small door you could open and close to let them in and out...

The first peachick I hatched out I kept inside in a baby crib with a thin bed sheet over the top. This was just when he was young. Soon they start getting bigger and before you know it just them flapping a little to stretch out their wings sends papers flying everywhere.

I too am not sure how a dipper would do since peafowl (even the peahens) have longer tails than chickens. The dipper probably would be a hindrance to the peacock's train and especially when it came time to display, which when they display their train is around 8ft. wide and can be 6ft tall so a peacock would need space to strut.

Another thing you have to think about is feathers. Just in a peacocks train alone they have 100 or more feathers. That is a lot of feathers strewn all over your house. Feather "dandruff" is another thing you would have to worry about in regards to feathers. When birds grow new feathers, a plastic looking cover helps protect the feather until it falls off or the bird preens and gets the "dandruff" off of their feathers.

Where would the peafowl sleep? If they sleep on a pillow or doggy bed, they could get used to sleeping on the ground and if you ever had to move them to an outside pen, they would be hard to train to use the roost, which using the roost is safer than sleeping on the ground.

If you end up with a peacock, once he gets older, he will start calling during the breeding season. I love the noise peacocks make, but I have been under a covered shed when my peacock Alto decided to call, and the sound was greatly amplified because of the roof and the sides. I can just imagine how noisy it would get with a peacock inside! Hopefully he wouldn't call a bunch...Or call at night.

I only keep chicks inside in the crib, and I quickly move them outside to a larger chick pen where they are much happier.

The only time I recall people keeping peafowl indoors is when they are sick and need monitoring. Some people bring there peafowl in shortly to weigh them or just for them to visit.

I couldn't imagine keeping a peafowl indoors but I guess it could work...Just watch out. Sometimes if you raise a peacock up from a chick, when they get older they will get very aggressive to you. The peacock I raised up from a chick hasn't been aggressive to me, but I keep him in an aviary.

This is my hand raised Peacock Peep. He gets his head scratchin' every day.


Here is Peep when he was younger. This is the size (maybe a bit smaller) when I moved him outside. I would watch him through the window at night in his outside pen running around catching bugs that were attracted to the light. You just can't get that indoors.


Here is the crib I was talking about. It has fabric mesh sides and can fold up. This is Peep checking out the new peachicks.


This is the outside peachick pen. This is before we added the chicken wire over it to make the holes smaller. We bought this at the local Farm & Nursery Mart as a chicken pen, but it is great for peachicks. The peachicks will hang out in the chicken nest boxes and I put logs in there for them to jump on. When the grass is cut I give them the grass cuttings (the grass doesn't have pesticides).


In my opinion, the ideal setup is for them to be in an outside pen because it is closer to what they would have in the wild, BUT I have only kept peachicks inside so who knows. Maybe keeping an adult peafowl indoors is fun and will work out.

Make sure if you do go through with this you take the peacock or peahen outside for say an hour or more. Give it some time to scratch around and eat grass and bugs. Let it take some dust baths. When I keep older peachicks in the outside pen I let them out sometimes to let them take a dust bath. I even let out the not so tame ones. They might fly around, but the nice thing about peachicks is they can't fly so fast and far like the older birds can. Don't catch a peafowl by the legs. When I grab one I grab them by the sides firmly and wrap my arms around them.

I am just imagining the FedEx guy coming to deliver a package to your house, and instead of a dog barking, there is a peafowl honking at him! Haha it would be interesting to see if they make alarm calls when someone walks up to the door.

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