Looking to add peafowl in the spring

[zazouse]

It sounds like whatever you are doing works for you, acmetnt, but most peapeople here will tell you that it's just not that easy to control where your peas go.
It certainly takes more than a little fence to keep them from straying.
Zazouse is an excellent example - as she says, she has 100 acres (and obviously keeps the peas well fed!) and still has to keep an eye on her gang all the time to keep them from getting in trouble (a devoted peamom!).

Yea the young ones stick close to home till they get older after that they are off exploring or chilling somewhere but they do return home to check in, if i do not see mine while i am outside i make sure i check on them, but honestly i have developed a sixth sence with them, i get a feeling they are up to something and sure enough they are somewhere i do not want them, usually across the drive at my daughters home, she is harldly ever there but i do not allow my birds over there, they know better to cause when they see me they stop dead in their tracks and look at me, usually they are just after something like the new kitten that showed up at her place.

I have had to leave my peas for a couple weeks at a time with my dogs in charge when my DH was in the hospital, i came home three day to check on everything and all when well so as long as my dogs are in charge while i am gone i can rest easy everyone will be fine.

 

[acmetnt23]

Yea for us we put a little fod out so they stay around and it works like a charm

 

[Sunny Dawn]

Thanks for all the pics! They are all so beautiful! We have 20 acres and our neighbor has 40 - they are free to visit our neighbor so that will not be an issue - I will be looking to all of you come summer for additional help when I have them home - so stay tuned! Any thoughts on hatching them myself or buying them as young birds? I see them occasionally at the local farmers market but I am always fearful of buying market birds....I wonder why they were brought there to begin with. As for a white peacock - I maybe sold after seeing how beautiful they are in the above photos!

Happy New Year to all of you!

 

[Trefoil]

They can be hard to hatch if buying shipped eggs. But you shouldn't have a problem finding someone near you to buy day or two olds from, and many of the big breeders will ship. For instant gratification, craigslist and or auctions will have adults, and I have found beautiful birds from a craigslist ad. The auction birds are harder to see because they are usually in small cages, but if you go early you should be able to talk with the owners. I have had terrible luck trying to allow my peacocks to free range during the day. 1- once they are out, they don't go back in, and the peacocks have a fatal attraction to the road, and I coop them about 150' from the road, with fence across the front. The hens don't seem to be that bad about going to the road, at least for me. This year I cut one wing on my babies, so I could let them out during the day and they couldn't fly to the trees to escape me, with the flight feathers cut on one wing, they are very good about returning to the coop at night and when they "forget" they herd back to it. The only problem I've had is that sometimes they go to the wrong coop. They need a higher protein feed than chickens. The best bet is to find someone with gorgeous birds and ask them what they feed.

 

[MinxFox]

Hello! I am a girl and I am a college freshman!

I have owned peafowl since around my freshman year in high school and I was nuts about them, and I am even more nuts about them now that I have them...They get VERY addicting....

Anyways we never had any birds so it was hard to convince my parents to let me get some after I spent several years researching them on my own to find out all the requirements. I keep my peafowl at my Grandma's because she has more land and less neighbors but she is only 2 miles away. She is on 10 acres. So the local zoo closed down and needed to get rid of some of their animals, and we were able to get an adult pair that was from the zoo. On some websites, they tell you that you can buy adult birds and after some months you can free-range them by wing clipping and penning them at night, etc. After a month and a half I let out my pair. The peacock started displaying once I let him out, but the peahen took off walking at a very fast pace, and the peacock followed her. We had to corral them around to keep them from heading to the road. Eventually they flew up into a big tree and roosted for the night. The next days were better...Sorta....They were always in the bushes. I thought free-range peafowl would be out in the open pecking at the grass but instead most of the time I would find them under some bushes just standing there. The only time they really went out into the open was to walk to their roosting tree, which was a huge oak tree. That is another thing, free-range peafowl will want a high place to roost at for the night. They will pick a big tree and roost at the very top or close to it. Sometimes it is hard to find them. They can hide so easily in the bushes so the best thing to do is not to freak out too much, although one day I did have a reason to freak out. The day of or the day before Christmas my peacock ran away. The peahen was still in the yard so it was strange that they would be seperated...We asked around and found out that people had spotted my peacock in their yard, they were across the road (it is a busy road so he was able to cross it somehow). My peacock was never at the houses though. We always showed up too late as he had already moved on. Sometimes we would hear a peacock far off in the distance calling. It probably was him. The peahen left too, and luckily we found her in a backyard across the street. She was there lying in the backyard sunning herself. We caught her with a fish landing net. We never got back our peacock. I still have the original peahen though. She is NOT allowed to free-range of course, she is penned. So are my other birds. This is the peahen, her name is Ice and she is a blackshoulder:


Being close to the road free-ranging might not be such a good idea, but some things work for some and they don't for others. It is best to have a pen in about the center of the yard, and definately as far away as possible from the road or the entrance to your yard. The goal for the pen is usually in about the middle of the yard because they need to learn where they will be free-ranging but if the pen is that close to the road they will get used to seeing the area near the road and think that is exceptable to range at.

There are lots of different varieties of peafowl, around 225, but it is best to get a cheeper variety if you are free-ranging. India blues are really great, I know they are the most common ones, but they are really beautiful birds.

They are definately eye candy, and people visiting will really marvel about them...Before my first peafowl ran off when I was free-ranging them, they would sometimes visit the neighbor (he liked them visiting) and one day he had some guests come over and when they got out of the car my peacock was there displaying for them. Our neighbor said it was great!

I would try and get some young peachicks. Hatching them out might be hard, they are not as easy as hatching chicken eggs, but if you can hatch some out that will really help them be friendly and stay in your yard, especially if they imprint to you. Also, when you have peachicks that will follow you around, when they are young you could walk them around the yard to get them used to the area they will free-range. Do your chickens ever free-range? They might help teach the peafowl where to stay a little bit... I have more of a connection with the peafowl I have hand raised and watched grow then the peachicks my peahens have hatched out or the birds I got as adults. I have one peacock named Peep that has imprinted to me. He lets me pet him and actually is always asking to be pet. Some people do warn not to have a peacock imprint to you because when he gets older he could become agressive...Peep is two now, so he is full size but he won't have a train until three. He is not showing agression, but rather love...He displays at me and tries to mate with my foot, so I have to push him away.

Normally he will make a mating call before he tries that, so all you have to do is move out of the way so it isn't that bad. You can't tell when they are small chicks what gender they are, so as I raised him and realized he was a peacock, I was a bit worried, but I don't think he will be an agressive peacock, he will just be overly friendly durring the breeding season it seems. This is Peep when he was a little chick:


Here he is now:




I have 12 peafowl in a 40x50 ft pen. I need to make some more pens to seperate them and also so I can get some more peafowl because I am addicted. I guess the eye candy factor is what drew me into owning them...When I visited the zoo as a kid I marveled over the peacocks displaying and thought they were magical. I was always taking more photos of the peafowl even though I could have been taking photos of tigers, African wild dogs, etc.
Once you get peafowl, you really do understand what makes them special...I could stare at them for a long time sure, but they are fun to watch. Sometimes they act silly by flapping and hopping around the pen. They make interesting noises too. I like the noises the peahens make to their peachicks. It is fun watching the peahens raise their chicks. Each bird is different and has their own personality. Some are more outgoing and some are more shy. They are just really fun to raise! I am really happy with them. Owning them is better than I would have expected, and also you get the benifit of course of getting all those pretty feathers once they shed them. Because a peacock will have around 100 train feathers, once he sheds all that, you have a ton of pretty feathers to sell, make stuff with, etc. Good luck getting your daugher some peafowl! I am sure she will love them! Right now I am trying to get my parents to let me get green peafowl...Actually they will let me have some once I build more pens....Which I really need to do...I keep putting it off... XD

 

[snowshoe]

Sunny Dawn I am located in central PA not to far from Penn State and I sell chicks and hatching eggs every year, send me a PM and I can let you know what types I should have available this year, If you let me know what part of the state you are from I could possible give you the name of a breeder that is closer than I am.

 

[JasonRain]

As long as you keep them fed and maybe put up a little fence to discourage them then they will stay close.

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