Advice on Free Range Peafowl

[chicknmania]

Ours free range. We have 20 acres but they will not go into our deep woods behind our house. they have a routine. Yes, every evening they go across the road (it's a rural one lane road)
into the field across the street, or to our next door neighbor's yard. They take a walk, all four of them. Our neighbor doesn't like them on his patio, he's one of those perfect yard types, but
he doesn't say much, because all of our other neighbors are so fascinated with them. Weirdly, they never go into our neighbor's yard on the other side...they have a farm with sheep. I love our birds, but they are a lot of worry. They have learned to recognize the call for dinner, and almost always come if they hear me calling them in the evening. If they don't come, I know that something has scared them, or there is something else wrong. They follow the chickens and will roost with them in the barn at night. We had a hen disappear once, and I am still convinced that some gun happy yayhoo shot her, thinking she was a game bird, or something.

 

[LittleRedShed]

How long should I keep him in the pen before I free range? He's only been here a couple weeks now and my chickens are still too young to free range. I found that Oscar loves lettuce! I plan to tell my neighbor that we got him and that we plan to free range. This neighbor is a nice guy but I don't want to create any problems so we thought we should let him know beforehand about free ranging and tell him if Oscar goes on his property to feel free to shoo him back over to ours. I was really hoping that if I keep him with our chickens and guineas that he will just become a "chicken" haha.

 

[zazouse]

It has been recommend here to keep them penned 2 to 3 months .

I don't think he will want to be a chicken he may come back to them but to check in but he will take off by himeself and explore Peas are different from chickens and guineas , they forage most of thew days where peas forage a little and explore alot so their activitie time is different.
, I raised all my peas with other hatchlings and they are still just peas, where a guinea might hang with chickens till breeding age and even try to hang with the peas, peas don't care Guineas panic when they get outta sight.

Also had guineas bond with the geese they were brooded with and when the goslings found the pond the guineas tried to go with them, poor babies, in the end the guineas left the geese and became part of the big guinea flock.

 

[chicknmania]

Ours hang with the chickens a lot, although the peaHENS don't seem to care for them much, and they don't like the peacocks too much either, they tend to hang
out by themselves, for the most part. But the peacocks seem to enjoy hanging with the flock a lot. We kept each one of our peas in quarantine for five weeks after
we got them, and that seemed to work for us.

cute pictures.

 

[LittleRedShed]

Can anyone explain why a peacock would not have spurs? Apparently Oscars were removed?

 

[DylansMom]

Can anyone explain why a peacock would not have spurs? Apparently Oscars were removed?

He's still young and they have not grown yet. I noticed last week that none of my 12 yearlings have spurs. It is not something that I have ever kept track of, so I'm not sure what age they are when they start to grow, but maybe it is related to sexual maturity. Perhaps someone else knows for sure. Either way, I doubt Oscar's were removed.

 

[LittleRedShed]

Oscar cannot wait to free range! I almost gave him the go today. But even with the opportunity, he decided to stay in the pen and eat grapes. I'm thinking about trying to use the grapes as his treat for returning? Has anyone else tried "training" their peafowl like this?

 

[mother hen 13]

I seem to have inadvertently trained two peacocks to live on my property.
They came from about a mile away the lady there penned them for eight weeks then let them go. I think her dogs scared them, they flew straight to our Farm.
Her son saw them in our yard and asked me to feed them as he did not think they would return home.( they really didn't like the dogs)
I feed them for a week then they went. we were both really worried that they had been eaten.
Yesterday they came back and I hear that they have been causing mayhem in town eating peoples plants!
We are both happy for them to stay at mine But how or indeed can we deter them from flying the 2 miles into town and causing trouble.
And if they do stay what should we do when winter comes. I don't think they can live outside in winter here and no one can catch them. (I hear some people tried really hard.)
They do seem to like grapes I hope your idea works.

 

[zazouse]

Mother hen ,
I highly drought you will be able to control where they go at this point, they already got 2 miles away and no one was there to stop them , so if you want to keep them pen them up for a very long time like 6 months and hope they stay around once you turn them loose again, but honestly no one has taken the time to teach them where not to go and at this age i and considering they been doing what they want going where they want they may not be able to be trained, i start mine as babies so i never had a problem with them getting off my land, not because they did not try but i was there when they do.

Hard to believe they we eating every-ones flowers, must be real special to them as i have never seen any of mine devour flowers and i plant wild flowers for them as well as greens ,sorghum,corn and peas they have so much other good things to eat that they never hone in on one plant and devour it, heck i don't even use a hot wire around my garden anymore, the chickens did all the damage and i don't have that many any more but the peas do like to dust bath in the garden.

Remember if you take these birds in as your own and they get turned loose again and cause trouble you could be held liable for the damage they do, flowers ain't nothing compared to a car when it comes to damage.
Peas like to get up high on all kinds of things.

We had some work being done here in Feb of this year, i had told the workers when they parked there truck here that the peas would get on it, it was parked in their roosting area, guess they did not care cause they parked there 3 more days, that truck had lots of scratches on it by time they left the job.

 

[mother hen 13]

I think it was young veg they were eating. People have just started planting out broccoli and spinach seedlings here which my chickens love. Or as you say perhaps they where just trying to dust bath if the soil was newly dug.
Trouble is they are not near the house most of the time but down by the open barn so I cant see what they are up to. They come up to the house in the evening and ask to be feed.
unfortunately I think they were released too soon and now there is no way of catching them again.
The back part of my poultry shed is empty at the moment and I did think if I left the door open and put food in there I could entice them in ? But I am rather worried I will get rats instead !
Just hope they don't decide to go for any cars!