Brought new peas home! But how long...?

[LedgeWoods]

Sunday I bought 3 young India blues, brought them home & released them into their new home (a remodeled corn crib with a variety of perches). All 3 (1 peacock, 2 hens) are from last year's hatch. I expected them to be nervous for a few days, but it's Wednesday and they still seem scared out of their wits. They hardly ate or drank that I can tell. They do have a wind break on the lower side, have been roosting both high and low, but don't seem to touch the BOSS I threw in either. We have some nasty weather moving in in the next 2 days & I'm worried that they aren't settling in better.
They were housed outdoors all winter, so they should be used to snow (although I'm pretty sick of it at this point!)

Any "old pro" have any guidance on how long it may take for them to warm up a little?! At what point should I worry?

 

[Arbor]

Sounds like they should be fine. It's normal for birds to be flighty even a year after rehoming. I've got birds that were moved into pens beside the drive almost 3 years ago, and they still scurry inside anytime someone walks by.

 

[zazouse]

Congratulations on your new Peas

How big is the corn crib and how high are the roost?

They will come down when they get hungry the thing is can they come down safely cause i am thinking a corn crib is pretty high, never seen one in person.

 

[LedgeWoods]

It's about 13' diameter and 18+' tall.. The pic is from last summer. There are 4 perches now (& a make-shift straw bale/plywood windbreak down low until weather gets better).
They've figured out the staggered perches well...they just seem to pace a lot. My summer mission is to socialize with them as much as possible to get them to mellow out a bit.

 

[new 2 pfowl]

That's high! It's good that you have perches at intervals, so they don't have to fly straight down too far. Do they do OK in there with landing? Peas need a "runway" - they glide down and need space to land. Also, they don't just land, they land and then take a few steps. When my boy comes down from the tree, he lands about 30-40 feet out from the tree itself...

 

[zazouse]

I would not put any perch more than 4 or mabe 5 feet with the with of the crib, any higher and they could injure themselves slamming into the sides, you put a roost 10 foot up they would need at least 15 feet mabe 20 to fly down properly. .

What you could do is build a platform in the pen higher up and put the roost below it far enough out that they can hop on it and that would utilize more space higher up.

 

[sandspoultry]

Our pea's don't really eat that much, you would think for their size that they would eat more than they do. I'm sure moving them has them spooked, ours love whole corn and hard boiled egg yokes - they will eat the whites but only after all the yoke is gone. That might help them settle in faster.

 

[LedgeWoods]

Low and behold I watched them eat out of their feeder this evening! Yay! Thanks for the reassurance everyone. They have figured out how to use the staggered perches to go up and down inside their pen, so I feel better about that too. The reasoning behind the really high roost was so they had a place to shelter them from rain. I'm hoping to post some pics this weekend when there is some sunshine & springlike weather for a change around here.

Here's sort of a side question...are peacocks attracted to the color red like chickens?

 

[Arbor]

I think social birds in general, as well as other animals, see blood(for example) as a sign of weakness and being quite low in the hierarchy. This tends to attract addition aggressive behaviour. I have seen this in peafowl.