First Attempt at Peafowl

[Tuhmu]

I was planning on getting some netting from Cutler's, they seem to be the most reasonable and have a decent selection of sizing.

Kind of a bummer to hear that they may not come back in, but that was kind of a nagging thing at the back of my head (think I've seen it mentioned before somewhere). The peafowl are probably 15 mi. (close by ND standards!

) or so away, feral may be the wrong word I guess, it would be more like free range/fend for yourself, but they still hang around their yard.

My closest neighbor is 1/4 mi away so I have that benefit going.

 

[Frenchman Creek]

This is a good thread to follow. Garden Peas has given you lots of good advice and asked you the questions future pea owners need to be asked. In my opinion the minimum coop size for peafowl is
10 by 16. An 8 by 8 house will have them jumping straight down and this could cause foot damage over time. The perch located in ND should be a flat 2x6 to prevent toe damage. The attached run should be eight feet high and as wide and as long as you can make and cover. I have four that are 25x 40 and they are a pain to build but if you build them right you only need to build them once. Mine also have 2x6 outside perches set at 5 Ft high on metal poles as I have found that peafowl when given a choice of perching inside a dry house and perch or perching outside in miserable , cold, nasty weather they will normally choose to perch outside in the nasty weather so the metal poles keep critters from climbing up to them. A way to help them in the winter is lots of straw on the floor and straw bales stacked outside along the Northwest wall to block your wind. Nice to see you planning how you are going to house them. Good luck with your choices.

 

[KsKingBee]

3 T has the best prices on netting.

 

[Garden Peas]

I haven't comparison shopped for netting in quite some time. When I built my first pen, I bought netting from Seattle Marine, and it is still holding up really well. As I recall, the price was good, and the quality was fantastic.

A huge factor for me was UV resistance. I live in an area where the UV radiation is extremely strong, so it eats up anything plastic outside in a hurry. Zip ties fail prematurely, bungee cords degrade quickly, plastic lawn furniture gets brittle. Even wood doesn't last as long here, and wood finishes -- pfffft!!! So I looked for netting that was made to be highly UV resistant and super-durable, and I was willing to pay more if I had to in order to get that in my netting. I'd already had sunshade fabric disintegrate over the dog pens... needed that to not happen over the bird pens

(Fortunately, the dogs did not fly out.)

I don't know about the level of UV in North Dakota (presumably less than here), but your temperature extremes may pose durability issues for plastic and synthetic-type materials... I don't know. Just seems as though they might be challenged more with the extreme cold?

So that's more questions for you to ask as you are shopping for netting.

Also, I remember looking into the question of snow loading on the netting, too. Depends on the size of the netting openings and the diameter of the netting material as well as the strength of the netting material. Smaller openings = more surface area = more snow weight on the netting, ditto for wider (thicker) strands of netting. But wider may be stronger, so there's offsetting factors... Smaller openings mean less tweety birds sneaking into the pen, stealing food and leaving avian viruses in their droppings, so that's a trade-off to think about, too.

Here's a link to the netting department at Seattle Marine. They have a huge variety of products and sizes of netting.

http://www.seamarnets.com/

Let us know what you figure out -- current info on netting is always helpful

 

[Tuhmu]

So it looks like I have 4 eggs developing very nicely so far, very active swimmers. Still have some more that I set on Saturday, will see in a couple days how they turn out. Hopefully next week is when I'm going to be starting on the coop. Still flip flopping numbers there though

. It would be great to do a nice big coop but I'm thinking a 12' x 12' x 10'H is what's in my current budget. Plus that works out better dimensionally for steel siding, and the osb under it (less chance for me to screw up with cutting it....not the best carpenter.)

 

[Tuhmu]

My first egg went into lockdown yesterday, sooooo excited, I even moved all my eggs into my other incubator so I could use my brinsea as the hatcher. There's also three chicken eggs with it, so he should have some buddies. Until the other ones hatch, which looks like there's seven that have very nice veining and look promising.

 

[DylansMom]

My first egg went into lockdown yesterday, sooooo excited, I even moved all my eggs into my other incubator so I could use my brinsea as the hatcher. There's also three chicken eggs with it, so he should have some buddies. Until the other ones hatch, which looks like there's seven that have very nice veining and look promising.

Good luck!

 

[Tuhmu]

Well, no signs of hatching from the peafowl egg yet. The two chicken eggs from my own hens, that I threw in there so the peafowl would have some temporary buddies, hatched last night. Sure hope I get at least a pip or something today (being at work is agonizing!) but it is what it is I guess.

It may have threw a roadblock in for him though, we had some bad weather last night and it knocked out the power for about 5 hours.... The two chickens had long hatched but I didn't see any signs of activity from the peafowl egg.

It was kind of cute, it must have started getting a little chilly in the incubator because shortly before the power came on the two chicks were cuddled up against the big warm peafowl egg.

How much longer do you think I should let it set? I was thinking over the weekend....going to sneak the two chicks out and put in the pheasant eggs that go into lockdown tomorrow, if there's no pips or anything from the peafowl egg.

 

[DylansMom]

Well, no signs of hatching from the peafowl egg yet. The two chicken eggs from my own hens, that I threw in there so the peafowl would have some temporary buddies, hatched last night. Sure hope I get at least a pip or something today (being at work is agonizing!) but it is what it is I guess.

It may have threw a roadblock in for him though, we had some bad weather last night and it knocked out the power for about 5 hours.... The two chickens had long hatched but I didn't see any signs of activity from the peafowl egg.

It was kind of cute, it must have started getting a little chilly in the incubator because shortly before the power came on the two chicks were cuddled up against the big warm peafowl egg.

How much longer do you think I should let it set? I was thinking over the weekend....going to sneak the two chicks out and put in the pheasant eggs that go into lockdown tomorrow, if there's no pips or anything from the peafowl egg.

What day are you on with the Pea egg, and did the chicken chicks hatch exactly on time?

 

[Tuhmu]

Today would make it day 32. The chicks hatched at the correct time. I think it may be time for an eggtopsy......