I had to sleep with peafowl eggs on my belly. Will they hatch?

[deerman]

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Well guess I got the sex right them.............

 

[Kedreeva]

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XD Yes! Good job hehe

 

[Kedreeva]

Someone recently reminded me of this post and so I thought I would come back and see what gender this little one turned out to be. Was it a girl as predicted?

 

[free_ranger]

Hi Kedreeva, yes she is a girl. You were right! She had those spots by the time she was a week old. So maybe you figured out how to sex them when they're hatched.

We named her Wheeper because she never stopped talking when she was a baby. You know, wheep-wheep-wheep. It was like echolocation.

 

[zazouse]

What happen to her? you spoke in the past tence when reffering to her.

 

[Kedreeva]

Awesome! I'm glad to hear it and thanks for responding!

I will definitely be keeping an eye on those saddle feathers come spring. Hopefully I will remember to start a thread for people to post their 2-week-old pics and follow ups at a few months, and get a few more examples!

 

[free_ranger]

I still have Wheeper but she lives in the barn now. I guess I wrote about her in the past sense because when she was wheep-wheep-wheeping she lived in the house with us and was my littlest baby. My days were so unproductive because of her neediness. I snuck around after I put her to bed at night so she wouldn't hear me and start half an hour of wheeping, or in the last couple of weeks, half an hour of this weird croaking (that I was embarrassed for her about) that developed into honking. Plus her greenish poops became horrendous. She was loose in the house but I put her in her cage every 15 or 20 minuts to poop because I heard of one that was crate trained and would go to the cage on her own to poo and sleep. Wheeper never caught on to go to the cage on her own, and even when I got her there in time, I was cleaning up her cage every 20 minutes.

Finally when she was 3 months old I got desperate for some freedom. I have 4 children ages 6-13, and the fall sports were overlapping with the winter sports seasons and I had 9 teams between the 4 of them. Plus my husband was working 12 hour midnights so I was running the children around and also caring for her. I found an ad for peafowl for sale, and the fellow happened to have 3 month old chicks! So I drove 1.5-2 hours to go get another peagirl. I said I'd take the first girl they could net which happened to be plucked by the other chickens or peafowl and had no crest or tail and had a bald spot on her back. I put her in a new coop in the barn with Wheeper and it is funny how they were for the first few weeks. The new girl was very lonely and would follow Wheeper around, and Wheeper didn't trust the new pea because it was a bird. She thought the pea was stalking her and might possibly kill her. I suspect she slept with her eyes open. I felt bad to abandon Wheeper but now the 2 peas are 4 months old and good friends.

She's still really friendly but now she knows she's a bird and is very different- not needy and needing comfort from me. She's not the little thing that used to sleep on my chest, under the covers, for the first 6 weeks of her life. I miss that part, when she was tiny and fuzzy and slept with her neck stretched out, and had to have my hands covering her to sleep. And I must be crazy because I feel like I'd like to try to hatch some low % spalding eggs in the spring. I'd like something greenish but not crazy. But if I get stuck with another lone chick... my family might leave me.

 

[rancher hicks]

Once again, I have two broodies in an unheated coop and one of them just hatched out three chicks so I say don't worry and carry on. You can of course always surround your incu with jugs full of hot water to keep the temp as high as possible. I would not be concerned over a degree or two.


We've had below zero temps here and Lord only knows they do it but they do.

Besides what choices do you have but to keep going?

Be calm and Carry on.

rancher