New thoughts on catching free range peacocks?

[deerman]

Put the peahen in a cage inside the pen, then leave the door to the pen open, place feed in the pen........if you need tie a rope to the door to pull it close......

 

[sacarvounis]

I just went through this with a 10 month old male. Both of mine are skittish and don't allow us to get too close esp. my husband. We made the mistake of chasing him around for a couple of hours when he first got out and he really took off. I put an ad in Craigslist and I was contacted immediately.....he was over in the next town in a residential neighborhood hanging around by glass sliding doors. The first time that we went over to try to catch him, he was on a back deck and even though we had a very large fishing net, he was still able to fly up and out of reach. I went back the next day and he was at a different house on a breezeway porch that had a roof. I casually walked up to the porch and put a plastic dog fence across the opening and went back home to get another pair of hands and a sheet. We walked up to the porch behind the sheet and he remained calm because he couldn't see us. Two people held the sheet up across the opening and I was able to grab him easily with the fishing net because he perceived the sheet as a barrier and didn't try to fly. Once the net was across his back, he laid down on the ground and didn't struggle....I was able to pick him up in the net and release him into a dog crate. But we got lucky that he chose to go stand in the breezeway....I really did think that we were going to spend the next week trying to get him into someone's shed or garage.

After this experience, I am having some serious second thoughts about allowing them to free range which was our original intention. We got them in October when they were 3 months old and they had been penned all through the winter which I thought was long enough for them to consider our property home. Having him at large for 10 days was a nightmare and I don't know if I can go through that again.....not to mention how difficult he was to catch!