Help!! Undecided on free range

[Just a Country Girl]

I bought some Peachicks last year with the intentions of free ranging them. Their now a year old and I'm attached to them and am afraid to let them free range. I don't want to loose any. What's the chances of them sticking around or taking off? They are all males a white, BS, IB and SSP.

 

[featherhead]

Free-ranging birds got us started in peafowl. Several years ago, a few males showed up in May. Unfortunately, only one survived. The others were killed by predators. My neighbor across the road cried for a week after she found the bodies and feathers in her field. The one who survived now has a big aviary, 3 girlfriends, and is spoiled senseless. Like you, I'm very attached to my birds and don't want to take any chances with them getting injured or killed.

 

[Kev]

Yes predators, especially dogs allowed to roam free is a concern. Things to consider: is the perimeter well fenced and high enough to keep most predators out? Is the yard large enough? One acre, many peafowl will be tempted to hop the fence.. they really like to walk around a little bit. However if you have 5 or more acres, that usually is fine.

Can you hear other peafowl not yours? They are very highly attracted to sounds of other peafowl and to a lesser degree, sounds of other poultry. I get semi regular visits of blues visiting my peafowl from someone else's yard in the neighborhood. If they hear other peafowl chances are they will sometime go over there to visit.. they may come back or stay there.

If the place is very big and perimeter fence is secure.. why not. Let only one bird out at a time.. do not push or catch and let him go outside. Need to walk out in a relaxed state or they get too nervous and "jumpy". Very important nothing chases them or scares them so keep kids and all dogs inside. Once they have been out a few times you can relax.

 

[featherhead]

Great points, Kevin. Don't forget about owls or large hawks. A friend of mine had several of her peas nailed by owls. Yikes.

 

[Hoosiermomma]

We free range our peas and chickens during the day and put them in at night. We have never had any trouble with predators during the day except once we had a hawk pick up one of my RIR's and dropped it as soon as they saw a crazy lady running across the yard screaming and hollering at it. We haven't had a problem since. LOL

 

[deerman]

Depend on how bad predators are in your area. Here dogs are my problems. Anytime you freerange thats alway a risk.

Full grown peafowl have fewer predators, Great Horn Owls, dogs, coyote, would be a few.

 

[Just a Country Girl]

Thanks for the info.. I live on 7 acres surrounded by town forest. I have about an acre and a half of lawn around the barn fenced in with 6 foot deer fence. I let my turkeys, chickens and Call Ducks free Range during the day and they all go in the barn at night. I have a lot of wildlife around. Bear, Deer, Coyotes, Fox, Fisher Cats etc. but haven't lost anything in the 6 years that I've been here. I don't have any real close neighbors but they do have chickens. I think the closest Peafowl around are about two miles away. I have my Peafowl in a 20x30x8 foot high aviary with a 12 foot house attached for them to go into. All I have to do is open the door for them to go in and out. I also have a large barn that they spent the winter in. The sliding doors in front and back are always open for the other birds to go in and out when they want. Everyone goes in on their own at dusk and I close them in.... A few days ago I opened the door to the Peafowl aviary and let them out. They were scared but started walking around the barn yard and into the barn. After about an hour of me worrying I herded them back in the aviary and I haven't let them out again. How do I let just one out at a time with out having to close it out? I want him to be able to go back in and roost up where they normally do at night? If I leave the door open the others will come out.

 

[Kev]

I don't know what deer fencing is, but if your other poultry have been all safe for all those years.. and the fencing doesn't have something solid across the top of the fence(such as wood or rail).. it should be relatively safe to first clip the peafowl's wings before letting them out.

The idea of clipping is they can't so easily fly far if they happen to do the typical "newly loose" peafowl reaction of freezing, jumping hard, flying non stop until they land in something or drop out of exhaustion far away. Even so, clipping is not really advisable for birds let loose where they can easily hop the fence or there is no fence as this will leave them very defenseless against predators or dogs and they will be defenseless until the next molt, which can be nearly a year if their wings were clipped soon after the annual molt.

However. If there is wood or railing on the deer fence, they still can easily jump to the top railing even with clipped wings. So you will need to be a little vigilant about that and they can be sort of trained to be discouraged from jumping up on the railing by running around and shooing them back in the area every time they do that.

Wing clip only one wing, and also only the primaries- the feathers on the 'hand' part of wing.. these will be the orangish ones on the blue's wing. Don't cut the solid black or the light tan with barring on it(the secondaries). It is the primaries that give the most energy for take off or powered flight.