Advice on Free Range Peafowl

[Ellaluvsbirds]

We live in the middle of a fairly large forest so I am nervous to let my birds free range because of predators.

 

[LittleRedShed]

Went out for the nightly feeding and water refilling and Oscar was fanned out! He's so cute

 

[Trefoil]

I live on 40 acres with light woods around my coops, I free ranged until I lost my 3rd bird to the road and then gave up. I couldn't convince them to return to the coop at night and had a really hard time catching them when I needed to.
100 square feet is 10' x 10', and that isn't nearly enough room for a pea run. I didn't notice where you live, but I have one of the pvc moveable pens and although I've never tried to move it, with a little modification, it works great. I got the plans for it from U of Tenn, but they are no longer on line, I think this is close to the same plans.
http://docs.snowshoe-farm.com/poultry/MoveablePenForFowl.pdf
I used 1/2" hardware cloth and when it was done & up went around it with a 2' apron of the 1/2" hardware cloth. But that's because I wanted to keep weasels out. On top I bought 6' poultry fence and J clamped it together in a sheet to cover the top of the pen. In the center of the pen I put a 12' 4 x 4, buried 3', and 7.8' out from it on all 4 corners I put another 4" x 4". I used the 4 by's as posts for roosts as well as roof supports. I put a plastic frisbee on top of each of the posts to protect the wire and draped it over the posts and to the sides, connecting it with the sides with J clips ( is a pain, but lasts). In spite of the super heavy snow this year, it stayed up. I poked it from the inside a couple of times to bring the snow down off it, but that's all. You can make these pens as large as you can afford wire for, they are much cheaper than any other secure kind of fence I've seen. Get uv protected pvc.

 

[LittleRedShed]

Our pen is a 10x12 - 120 sq ft pen with a clear roof. That way the sun peeks in. We also added a roost hanging from the ceiling beams just for him. I'll post a picture if I can. The roost is about 6 1/2 - 7' off the ground.

 

[LittleRedShed]

Without the roost for the peacock.

 

[zazouse]

Nice size pen but chicken wire is a bad thing in most cases, just about anything but a chicken can get threw it, just wanted to mention this as i have read about many losses to predators here on BYC and 9 times outa 10 they were enclosed in just chicken wire.
A roll of 2 by 4 welded wire attached to what you already have would fix the problem fairly easy and give your birds a safer enclosure.

I have a pack of dogs to keep things safe here but i still use layered wiring just in case.

 

[DylansMom]

I'm going to have to agree here, there is just about NO chance that you do not have any predators around. You may not see them because most are nocturnal, but they are there. A raccoon will happily kill a full grown peacock and can tear thru chicken wire in minutes(if that long). We are working on rebuilding our outside runs and I have decided to use 1 x 1.5 welded 12.5 gauge galvanized pvc coated wire, overkill for peas but I wanted the strength and durability, as I don't intend to redo these again.

 

[MinxFox]

Oops yes he needs more than 100 square feet! Sorry I am silly.

I didn't think I had predators or at least I didn't think much about them, I mean what is going to kill a big peafowl? I knew there were coyotes but I wasn't worried about them since they stay in the back of the property. I got a beautiful pied peacock that I REALLY wanted. I enjoyed him for about two years maybe then raccoons broke into the pen and killed him. Soon they killed another peahen and now raccoons are sometimes an issue for me. I can't have an outside dog to guard the area but I am looking into hotwiring the pen. It is better to be safe than sorry because that was such a nice bird I had an now he is gone.

You never really know what is out there lurking at night. We had a snare on this corner post of the pen and caught this big female raccoon. She tore up the netting really badly.

 

[LittleRedShed]

He is an enclosed pen. There is a roof overhead and it is up against the barn. So two sides have the fencing but it goes from ground to roof. In the five yrs we lived here we have only seen deer and an occasional possum or raccoon on our trail cam. We have "guard cats". Lol. I actually watched my cat run a fox off our property and has overtaken their den! Coyotes are not in our area - or at least we have never seen one / caught one on our camera in five yrs. We've had the birds in their pen almost a month now and so far no sign of any forced entries. But it is a heavily trafficked area on our property too, so I hope with the four cats and people wondering around the activity will deter any predator.

 

[zazouse]

Ya know i can set up all 3 of my cams in different areas and almost always catch something, wanna know for sure what you got in the area put out a bucket of dog food way away from your run and wait and see what come for dinner you will be real suprised what shows up in no time, just cause you ain't seeing them on the cam don't mean they ain't there it just means they haven't come that way yet, i have game trails all over my place to keep an eye on whats around and if they are new or not and my Peas see all kinds of wild things and what do they do??? run after the trespassers like fools fanning like they are big and bad then all off a sudden they take off flying and calling all the way back to the barn cause one of them got spooked, or they will follow the trespasser to the ends of the earth or outa site which ever come first so you got to keep an eye on them.