I have a few thoughts.
First, remember that peafowl are native to warm lands, but were brought to colder Europe over the centuries. Those which managed to survive the change were the ones which continued to breed. Additionally, those which remained "close to home" were less likely to be killed by predators. There is an evolutionary tendency for individuals within species (or across closely related species) to be more rounded, or stockier, the further from the equator the population exists. This has to do with heat loss from the surface area to body mass ratio -- long and lean favors heat loss, while short and stubby favors heat retention, and thus "short and stubby" would be selectively favored in a colder climate. It's probably a reason why the more "Green" a Spaulding is, the less cold-hardy it is -- not because the wild Greens are less cold-hardy than the wild Blues, but because they are more long and lean. Spauldings from wild IB X Greens would probably be no more cold-hardy than a pure Green.
Secondly, there's the issue of inbreeding. I see over and over on this forum that "it's ok to inbreed for a generation or two". I think this is because many peafowl keepers come from a livestock (rather than zookeeper) background. Aviculturists keeping other species try to avoid any and all inbreeding. If an aviculturist seeks to reproduce a new mutation, some inbreeding occurs to increase numbers, but that's immediately followed by outcrossing. Livestock keepers, on the other hand, frequently use inbreeding to "fix" certain traits, eliminate others, and aim toward producing cookie-cutter animals (after lots of culling). That's fine if your parent stock has exceptional qualities you wish to reproduce. But often on this forum, I see people posting about inbreeding simply to avoid buying more birds (i.e. saving money).
OK, so inbreeding for one generation might not be terrible. But then you sell the inbred offspring, and people purchase inbred siblings from the same clutch. Then they come here and say "I know they're brother and sister, but would it be OK if I let them breed?" and people here say "it's OK to inbreed for one generation". Meanwhile, what isn't known is that the siblings were already produced from inbreeding (and for who knows how many generations). Then chicks from that pair are sold to someone else, who again asks "Is it OK if I let the brother and sister breed?" I think you see my point. Over time and generations of haphazard inbreeding, the birds in captivity will start looking different (beyond simple individual color mutations) from their wild cousins through genetic drift and bottle-necking (forms of evolutionary change), as well as the natural selection mentioned previously. Now, if your goal is to domesticate the peafowl (like how the chicken developed from wild jungle fowl), then so be it. But don't be surprised that while you're following that path, the domesticated peafowl will drift further away in appearance from the wild peafowl.
Aviculturists working with other species (parrots, toucans, barbets, corvids, etc.) will seek to set up their pairs by using birds from different sources to avoid inbreeding because they don't want the domestic populations to drift from their wild cousins. Their goal is to reproduce the wild species, changed as little as possible, in captivity. To avoid drift, pairs are put together by choosing birds as unrelated as possible. The goal is that even several generations down the road, a captive reared bird will look the same as those in the wild. Some aviculturists take this further and eschew color mutations. Most also are highly against hybridization (that certainly violates their goal of maintaining a pure captive sample of a wild species).
One isn't necessarily "more right" or "better" than the other -- each approach has different goals. But lamenting about the loss of beauty found among wild India Blue peafowl among domesticated examples would be like saying "why can't my chickens look like the wild jungle fowl?" In both cases, they weren't bred with that intention in mind.
Not to many will pay the big bucks to get them until the price goes down . connerhills
