peacock as a indoor pet

[muus]

Hi
Anyone haves peafowls in her home? I want to have eggs to incubate and have my peacocks at home indoor. I'll take them a walk everyday. I live beside a big garden that havesplaces with water, grass and land. A lot of pine trees and almond trees.
I need to ask you if they are good pets? i can put them a diaper harness?
Thank you

 

[Kedreeva]

Great! I hope you never do it. I've had many more years experience since posting this, and have had a bunch more birds raised by myself and by hens And the birds are much more well-adjusted when raised by hens.

 

[DukesDucks]

Wow! Thank you for posting your experience in keeping a Peafowl indoors. I am very inspired!

Did you read all of this tread? I know there has been a lot of response on your other post. You should realize that the posts here were about keeping peachicks inside only until they are able to be outside. I hope you also noted that there was a flock, not a single bird, and a large outdoor run.

 

[MinxFox]

Do you have a backyard that you could build a pen for them in? At least you could have a small door you could open and close to let them in and out...

The first peachick I hatched out I kept inside in a baby crib with a thin bed sheet over the top. This was just when he was young. Soon they start getting bigger and before you know it just them flapping a little to stretch out their wings sends papers flying everywhere.

I too am not sure how a dipper would do since peafowl (even the peahens) have longer tails than chickens. The dipper probably would be a hindrance to the peacock's train and especially when it came time to display, which when they display their train is around 8ft. wide and can be 6ft tall so a peacock would need space to strut.

Another thing you have to think about is feathers. Just in a peacocks train alone they have 100 or more feathers. That is a lot of feathers strewn all over your house. Feather "dandruff" is another thing you would have to worry about in regards to feathers. When birds grow new feathers, a plastic looking cover helps protect the feather until it falls off or the bird preens and gets the "dandruff" off of their feathers.

Where would the peafowl sleep? If they sleep on a pillow or doggy bed, they could get used to sleeping on the ground and if you ever had to move them to an outside pen, they would be hard to train to use the roost, which using the roost is safer than sleeping on the ground.

If you end up with a peacock, once he gets older, he will start calling during the breeding season. I love the noise peacocks make, but I have been under a covered shed when my peacock Alto decided to call, and the sound was greatly amplified because of the roof and the sides. I can just imagine how noisy it would get with a peacock inside! Hopefully he wouldn't call a bunch...Or call at night.

I only keep chicks inside in the crib, and I quickly move them outside to a larger chick pen where they are much happier.

The only time I recall people keeping peafowl indoors is when they are sick and need monitoring. Some people bring there peafowl in shortly to weigh them or just for them to visit.

I couldn't imagine keeping a peafowl indoors but I guess it could work...Just watch out. Sometimes if you raise a peacock up from a chick, when they get older they will get very aggressive to you. The peacock I raised up from a chick hasn't been aggressive to me, but I keep him in an aviary.

This is my hand raised Peacock Peep. He gets his head scratchin' every day.


Here is Peep when he was younger. This is the size (maybe a bit smaller) when I moved him outside. I would watch him through the window at night in his outside pen running around catching bugs that were attracted to the light. You just can't get that indoors.


Here is the crib I was talking about. It has fabric mesh sides and can fold up. This is Peep checking out the new peachicks.


This is the outside peachick pen. This is before we added the chicken wire over it to make the holes smaller. We bought this at the local Farm & Nursery Mart as a chicken pen, but it is great for peachicks. The peachicks will hang out in the chicken nest boxes and I put logs in there for them to jump on. When the grass is cut I give them the grass cuttings (the grass doesn't have pesticides).


In my opinion, the ideal setup is for them to be in an outside pen because it is closer to what they would have in the wild, BUT I have only kept peachicks inside so who knows. Maybe keeping an adult peafowl indoors is fun and will work out.

Make sure if you do go through with this you take the peacock or peahen outside for say an hour or more. Give it some time to scratch around and eat grass and bugs. Let it take some dust baths. When I keep older peachicks in the outside pen I let them out sometimes to let them take a dust bath. I even let out the not so tame ones. They might fly around, but the nice thing about peachicks is they can't fly so fast and far like the older birds can. Don't catch a peafowl by the legs. When I grab one I grab them by the sides firmly and wrap my arms around them.

I am just imagining the FedEx guy coming to deliver a package to your house, and instead of a dog barking, there is a peafowl honking at him! Haha it would be interesting to see if they make alarm calls when someone walks up to the door.

 

[Kedreeva]

If you're still wondering about indoor peafowl, I will say that I've kept a couple indoors until a couple months old, and had a yearling indoors after surgery (with a diaper). Blue Creek Farm is correct in that they have REALLY BIG and REALLY SMELLY poops when they get bigger than a couple of months, so you would have to change any diaper lining at least twice a day, if not three or four times a day to keep it from getting too messy or smelly. The diaper I used for Blu after surgery was from chickendiapers.com, and was lined with modified ziploc baggies.


The worst thing about the diapers is that unless your bird is incredibly calm, they are really difficult to put on so that they fit snugly enough to work right. Blu was indoors for three weeks and the first week there were a lot of accidents as I tried to figure out how best to quickly get the diaper on when changing the liners. His feathers were already kind of a mess from being in a cage while awaiting surgery, but the diaper did not make it any better in that regard. I was keeping his wings clipped anyway so that he did not careen around the room knocking things over, but you would also most likely need to keep a peacock's wings clipped in order to quickly apply the diaper.

Where Blu struggled very wildly to get away from me putting on the diaper, Gizmo seems to have no problems (Although I modified his so it FITS better, so that may be some of it). His diaper doesn't interfere with his wings at all, but I haven't seen him display while wearing it yet and suspect it would interfere. He's also still a baby (only 4 months).

There is no leashing even the tamest peafowl, trust me on this one. Not even snugglypants Gizmo, my current imprint project, will take a leash. However, where as my first imprint project was very eager to fly around and out of reach and explore the moment she was outdoors, Gizmo appears more interested in hanging out with people. When I take him outside, he tends to wander around checking on whatever I'm doing, saying hello to the new people, watching the turkeys be turkeys, taking sand baths. He doesn't fly. I suspect he believes he is actually a cat.




Minx spoke about where your bird would sleep at night indoors; for a while, Gizmo was sleeping on my chest or my hip at night (or when he was extra snuggly he would scream until I let him under the covers to cuddle). Currently we have a very tall bookshelf that we've applied a thick carpet to, and Gizmo has taken to sleeping up there at night instead and that's a lot better (and something I would change if I were doing this again, earlier training on sleeping on a perch).

In the long run, Gizmo will end up outdoors (free range if he doesn't bother the neighbors). The reason he's still inside is because our winter got very cold very fast, before he was old enough to overwinter outdoors, and my indoor pen was a little crowded because we didn't get to finish the new outdoor pen (story of my life on the BUSY front). Everyone else is absolutely right about the noise level- once they lose their "baby" voices and start getting their big bird voices, your ears will literally ring any time they call because it's so loud.

As much as I would love to have a permanently indoor pea (and have experimented extensively with the idea), I'm going to join in on the "keep them outdoors as adults" train here.

 

[BYC-user-174785]

They still have wild instincts... If you clip the flight feathers on both wings that will not help. One the flight feathers on one wing need to be clipped so that they have no balance when flying. Keep in mind, even with clipped flight feathers, peafowl can easily jump quite high. My white peacock could jump onto a six foot tall fence with one clipped wing.

 

[new 2 pfowl]

I only want the better for the birds(i know the better is not going to be indoor pet, but it's better than a caged bird.

I mean no offense, but perhaps it isn't such a good idea for you to own peafowl, as you don't seem to be in a situation that is "better for the birds," where they can fly and be safe outdoors. You seem enjoy your other, more appropriate pets; why risk peas by keeping them someplace they do not belong?

Also, in my opinion, Pfauenfreund is certainly correct to comment here that he would not sell eggs to someone who would not take proper care of their peas and who just wants to "have an experiment" with peas. He's only expressing his own feelings about his peas and their eggs.

Finally, I suggest that, since you have come here for advice, you might listen to Kedreeva who has a vast amount of experience doing exactly what you want to do. Her Gizmo is clearly not a "monster," but the result of an outdoor, wild creature spending time in an unnatural environment. Kedreeva has obviously gone to great lengths to have her boy be as happy, healthy, and well adjusted as possible. Please take a moment to really think about the great advice she has kindly taken the time to give you.

Again, I am not saying any of this to cause offense in any way!!

I certainly know how wonderful peacocks are and how exciting it would be to have one as an indoor pet!
But I only worry about the health and well being of any peas you might get in the future.

 

[Kedreeva]

Well this whole thread has become a train wreck. I'm going to say, again, that this is most likely (barring miracles) not going to go the way you are currently dreaming. As someone said earlier, you have a very beautiful place to free range birds. But if you're looking to imprint all these birds (even excluding the quail and pheasants that probably would not imprint even if you tried), it's not going to work for the peas. You're not going to be able to successfully imprint (to the degree you want) more than 1 pea at a time.

I'm not trying to be mean, but as the person here who has done this over and over, I am telling you that group-housing peas will result in them NOT imprinting to you (they will not dual-imprint, I have no idea where you got that idea for peafowl), especially as you will be dividing your time between them and the other birds that are about to be under your care. The peas may be somewhat more human friendly than if you just left them alone, but they aren't going to follow you around- not even Gizmo does that outside. You aren't going to be "mom". This may not be true for other birds (my chickens all follow me around, and I never imprinted ANY of them, they just do it) but it IS true of peafowl (again, barring miracles or one-off oddities).

You had mentioned housing ducks and peas together. Someone objected to that, someone else said they do that just fine. I'll add my 2 cents in on that; I have 3 muscovies in with my birds, and it's never been a problem. However, the muscovies don't "play" in the water as much as regular ducks do, and I dump/clean/refill the water bucket daily. Non-muscovy ducks love to play in the water- the waterer you left a picture of will be emptied daily by them. They will play in it until there is no water left to play in, and there is no water left for the other birds to drink. When I moved, we left all the non-muscovy ducks with a friend who had a pond, because they were so incredibly messy in a pen. You won't just be changing water daily; you will need to muck out wet bedding almost daily, too, or it starts rotting. We currently water the pen with the ducks with a homemade bucket like this (this one has food in it, but we use them for water, too):



The lid screws on so it can't be knocked off, and the birds have to put their head in to drink, which means they can't poop in it. If you want to house them together, that may be a good way to go.

You mentioned (and quite disturbed me, actually) that you will indoor-house/cage-house all the birds for at least 1 month because then they will be able to "defend" themselves. There's no "defend" themselves, that is why we put birds in pens and trap/kill predators and it's why people have tragic, tragic stories about the time X-predator got into the pen and killed so-and-so their favorite bird. These are prey animals you are raising, and maybe not everything has the ability to kill them, but that doesn't mean nothing can once they pass a certain age. I JUST read an article less than a month ago about an adult peahen who was killed by a CAT, like just a house cat. Please do not make the mistake of thinking that because your birds get to full-grown that they will be able to defend themselves; you will need to take an active role in keeping them safe once you have them.

You asked what you would get out of the parents that you listed. You'll get blue birds split white and black shouldered if the parents were a blackshoulder and a white. If the white is carrying blackshoulder (which wouldn't show on the hen), you would get blackshoulder split white.

I would strongly encourage you to start asking questions about how best to safely and successfully free-range birds, rather than imprinting, because that's looking like how this is going to end up for you.

 

[Kedreeva]

I'm on my phone so I'll be brief. I said that pheasants and quail probably could not be imprinted. They are incredibly wild.

Parrots and peafowl are both birds but that is where the similarity ends. People have done amazing things with parrots and teaching them things and bonding with them. Peafowl are not the same at all in that respect. What you are comparing is like saying you want to raise a cat to act like how a monkey was raised- they are both mammals but they are nothing alike. It's cool what that person did with parrots but you cannot reasonably expect to do the same with peafowl.

As I have wanted from the beginning of this thread, I still just want you to be realistic in your plans and expectations of what is going to happen with the birds you are planning on caring for, both for your sake and theirs.

 

[casportpony]

It's true that they are very wild birds but I will try to do it, with my button quails I don't pass a lot of time with him, but they don't scare of me, when they see me they come, and they are not imrpinted animals. I'll try and tell what happens, the animal kingdom can make us surprise.
I know that are not the same, I said that gived me the idea to do this project with fowl, because are more easy to find and not very expensive. With parrots I'll need to pay a lot of money.
I am young and I need to have mistakes to learn, the project could not be what I expect, but I trust in myself and I need to be positive. What could happen if I listen to some things you told me could happen? It will happen that I never do this project. I know you want to help me and say what happened to you and I am very grateful. This project will be recorded and I'll make some documentaries taht I will upload to youtube. When I had my 3 goslings, always said that I'll tell everything. My goslings a lot of times don't want to follow me and prefer stay eating, but when they don´t see me, they start to tweet a lot and very loud. I will show everything in the videos, the bad things and the good things. Because when I see the documentaries making of, always they show a very nice bird, or a very good pet and they people like you that say the true(I don't say that in the documentaries lie) and you are like the bad people that say negative things and you only pretend to help.
Thanks

Am i reading this correctly? Are you saying that Kedreeva is only saying negative things and pretending to help? If so, that's not a nice thing to say and sure isn't true from where I'm sitting.

-Kathy