How do you sell your extra peacocks?

[Redtractorranch]

I have an extra peacock that I am trying to sell. I have it listed on Craigslist (San Francisco) and our local Yahoo group for chickens. I am getting tons of responses, but everyone responding is horribly ignorant and/or annoying. How does everyone else sell their extras? I am wasting a lot of time answering stupid questions or waiting for people who never show.

I have him listed for $25 and describe him as an average peacock that is the product of parents that I adopted as strays from the animal shelter and kept in a large aviary. The reason for selling is that he is fighting with his father.

Questions I have received:

I don't have a crate for him, can I just hold him on my lap when I drive?
I don't have a crate, can I just tie his legs together and throw him in the bed of my pickup?
Is he house trained?
I live in a townhouse with a courtyard, is he trained to stay in his yard?
I live downtown but don't believe in caging animals, will he stay in my yard?
Can my kids (toddlers) pet/play with him?
Would you mind delivering him 2 hours away for free?
I live downtown, can you guarantee that he won't be loud? (I get this one A LOT!)

I get these, along with the basic questions that a minute or two of web surfing would tell them....like how long do they live? (my thought is that, if you are too lazy to do a quick internet search on the basic info about an animal before you buy it, you won't do it after you buy it and therefore you are unlikely to care for it properly, nor take it to a vet if there is a problem.)

In the week that I had it posted on CL I got well over a dozen responses. Virtually all contained multiple questions from above. Those that didn't never showed up at the agreed upon time and were never heard from again.


I see peacocks listed all the time on CL. Is everyone else getting this? How do you deal?

I am not asking much because I want him gone, but I don't want to send it somewhere where he won't be cared for either.

 

[DylansMom]

I have an extra peacock that I am trying to sell. I have it listed on Craigslist (San Francisco) and our local Yahoo group for chickens. I am getting tons of responses, but everyone responding is horribly ignorant and/or annoying. How does everyone else sell their extras? I am wasting a lot of time answering stupid questions or waiting for people who never show.

I have him listed for $25 and describe him as an average peacock that is the product of parents that I adopted as strays from the animal shelter and kept in a large aviary. The reason for selling is that he is fighting with his father.

Questions I have received:

I don't have a crate for him, can I just hold him on my lap when I drive?
I don't have a crate, can I just tie his legs together and throw him in the bed of my pickup?
Is he house trained?
I live in a townhouse with a courtyard, is he trained to stay in his yard?
I live downtown but don't believe in caging animals, will he stay in my yard?
Can my kids (toddlers) pet/play with him?
Would you mind delivering him 2 hours away for free?
I live downtown, can you guarantee that he won't be loud? (I get this one A LOT!)

I get these, along with the basic questions that a minute or two of web surfing would tell them....like how long do they live? (my thought is that, if you are too lazy to do a quick internet search on the basic info about an animal before you buy it, you won't do it after you buy it and therefore you are unlikely to care for it properly, nor take it to a vet if there is a problem.)

In the week that I had it posted on CL I got well over a dozen responses. Virtually all contained multiple questions from above. Those that didn't never showed up at the agreed upon time and were never heard from again.


I see peacocks listed all the time on CL. Is everyone else getting this? How do you deal?

I am not asking much because I want him gone, but I don't want to send it somewhere where he won't be cared for either.

Oh my, perhaps you are not asking enough. At just $25.00 pretty much anyone could afford him (whether it's a good idea or not), and people can be very uncaring when it comes to animals, the loss of $25 is not going to hurt too much. When I advertise them I do not actually put a price in the ad, they have to call me to find out the price and usually I will ask them several questions right off the bat to determine if I am dealing with a potential "good" home or a total idiot. If it's a total idiot on the phone, the price goes sky high

. I have actually only ever had 1 call that was as bad as what you are getting, he thought he could put a Peacock in his back yard and his 4' fence would contain it, then it could just meander around the yard looking pretty. He was stunned to learn they could and would jump fences and fly away.

We are in a pretty rural area so most callers have farms or at least some acreage, what is your area like?

 

[Redtractorranch]

Our area is a complete mix of property types. My town is pretty rural with lots of veg and horse farms, but I am 30 min from San Jose, so I get all types. I priced the bird at $25 because there were peacocks in neighboring towns listed for $40 (as well as multiple of "Free Peacock" signs in front of ranches in the area). It is hard to sell a bird when others are giving them away, but "free" often means it won't be treated well, so I put the $25 price on him. Now, if he were a color other than India blue (particularly white), those peas go for a lot more.

Back 10 years ago when I first got peacocks, there was a big market for them, the prices were higher and I didn't have a problem selling them. I haven't bred them for 5 years and was content with two trios. Unfortunately, one hen died and another escaped (I think she joined the free range flock a guy 4 farms away has). Now I have two males and two females, a lot of fights and no space to separate them.

I am not too keen on giving my phone number out. I feel safer going through the anonymous email system in Craigslist. I don't want to get lots of telemarketer calls on my cell phone and I have to pay for each incoming text (everyone texts here and often ONLY texts). I get sooo many telemarketer calls on my land line that the ringer is permanently turned off and I check the answering machine about once a week.

 

[casportpony]

I'm in Gilroy (the one with the $40 yearling peacock ad) and don't get any of those questions from my peafowl ads. For those not from this area, @Redtractorranch is about 5 miles from me.

-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

Our area is a complete mix of property types. My town is pretty rural with lots of veg and horse farms, but I am 30 min from San Jose, so I get all types. I priced the bird at $25 because there were peacocks in neighboring towns listed for $40 (as well as multiple of "Free Peacock" signs in front of ranches in the area). It is hard to sell a bird when others are giving them away, but "free" often means it won't be treated well, so I put the $25 price on him. Now, if he were a color other than India blue (particularly white), those peas go for a lot more.

Back 10 years ago when I first got peacocks, there was a big market for them, the prices were higher and I didn't have a problem selling them. I haven't bred them for 5 years and was content with two trios. Unfortunately, one hen died and another escaped (I think she joined the free range flock a guy 4 farms away has). Now I have two males and two females, a lot of fights and no space to separate them.

I am not too keen on giving my phone number out. I feel safer going through the anonymous email system in Craigslist. I don't want to get lots of telemarketer calls on my cell phone and I have to pay for each incoming text (everyone texts here and often ONLY texts). I get sooo many telemarketer calls on my land line that the ringer is permanently turned off and I check the answering machine about once a week.

If any of those free signs are for hens, get them and sell as a pair or trio. I get lots of call from people looking for pairs and trios.

-Kathy

 

[zazouse]

I sell trios only when it comes to yearlings, i had 10 trios i made up from last years hatch and i only have 4 trios left and hope to move them when i put my signs back up , this year i have kept more hens to make more trios with 5 older males i want to move out of here.

 

[Redtractorranch]

So for those of you selling trios. Does that mean you butcher half of your males every year?

 

[Redtractorranch]

Oh, and I called on one of the "free peacock" signs. That individual had 11 birds, male and female. Some pied and you had to take ALL of them. I imagine that that represents a lot of the free signs. People just want out of them. Especially since most of the signs appear in the spring.

 

[casportpony]

So for those of you selling trios. Does that mean you butcher half of your males every year?

Heck no, lol, I have a pen full of them!

-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

Oh, and I called on one of the "free peacock" signs. That individual had 11 birds, male and female. Some pied and you had to take ALL of them. I imagine that that represents a lot of the free signs. People just want out of them. Especially since most of the signs appear in the spring.

If he still has them, you could get all of them, keep the ones you wanted and take the others to Farmers Feed in exchange for store credit. Of course that means subjecting the poor peas to those horrible, diseased living conditions.

-Kathy