Males and females.

[zazouse]

I have been observing the tails of the young male and female peafowl and have come to the conclusion that there is a difference in at an early age, makeing it possible to tell the white males and females apart at an early age without DNA.
However if you are wanting to know when they hatch you will just have to pay to find out.
here is my pied pair, this is the first time i have ever seen the femal fan and as luck would have it i caught the male pied fanning next to her.
The females on the left and male on the right, notice the difference in the tail feathers.

This is a white female with 2 males.

this male was 7 months old in this photo.


I saw all 12 of mine fanning at the same time at the pond yesterday and all the females had rounded tails unlike the males which had longer feathers in the center of their tail, i remember Clinton posted males had more tail feathers that females so mabe this is what we are seeing here.

 

[zazouse]

Sorry about the multipal post , i have someone taking care of them.
for some reason when i post it dosen't show they have gone threw.

 

[Kedreeva]

Well that's certainly interesting. Anyone else have photos of their peas from behind for us to compare some more? If this is pretty solid/consistent then we can pass it along to anyone coming to ask. Telling at 6 months for a white is a lot better than 2 years!

 

[MinxFox]

I was starting to notice that the center fan feathers were taller too...My dad said it is that way in young turkey males....

The problem I have with my whites is I rarely catch them fanning. I do think I have a male and two hens though...

 

[zazouse]

Minxfox do your whites have spurs? mine whites do and i can tell from the spurs, i think your peas are older than mine, i can't remember but i am sure mine are all females they were hatched in Aug of last year
My rarely fan but all my blues are fanning all the time .

 

[zazouse]

Heres an older peahen fanning with a male onlooker

 

[Glenmar]

Cool observation.

 

[frenchblackcopper]

Males also seem to have 5 distinct "layers" of tail feathers compared to hens one.I've watched Roadtrip and Opie open up when I come into their pens and as the tail feathers raises off their backs you can see the layed effect,,same when watching them bring the train back down,,very graceful and nothing else like it,especially if you have males that like to show off for you and redily "open up" for you,almost on command.There also is a symetrical equation I found describing the eye placings in male train feathers,,someone must have really been bored and had a Ph.d in algebra to come up with it.

 

[Kedreeva]

Share the equation? That would be really interesting to have a look at!

 

[frenchblackcopper]

Now I gotta try and remember what my search was when I came across that equation,,,it was a few weeks ago,latenite when I was trolling the net,,