Peacocks?

[casportpony]

ok thats a good size are peacock chicks bigger than normal chicks?

Yes. When mine hatched, they weighed no less than 60 grams each.

 

[Ghostbelly]

i do want to get a young one so that i can train it a little are yearlings pretty trainable?

 

[casportpony]

i do want to get a young one so that i can train it a little are yearlings pretty trainable?

I'm pretty new to peafowl, so maybe someone else should answer that... But in my very limited experience, I would say no and that you would be better off starting with a much younger one.

 

[Ghostbelly]

ok thanks for your advice

 

[Ghostbelly]

what do you feed peacocks?

 

[new 2 pfowl]

Hi Ghostbelly,
I wonder if you have looked at the peafowl stickies?
They have a lot of great information about different kinds of peacocks, how to take care of them, what they eat, and a lot of other stuff:

"Sticky" Threads for the "Peafowl" forum:

• Peafowl - "Sticky" topics index

 

[MinxFox]

Definately go for one younger than a yearling if you want to train it. My peacock I got as a yearling was tame as in eat out of your hand and stand a foot away tame, but my peacock that I hand raised since he hatched is so tame. When they are young they are more inclined to do tricks because they are still at that stage where you are their mommy and they want to be involved with anything with you. When they get older they have more of a mind of their own and will be harder to train. I didn't really train my hand raised peacock, although even without training I can get him to fly onto someone's arm or by just tapping up on a perch or a stump he will fly up there on command. I don't use treats to get him to do that either. He just does it. On a side note...I was rolling a log into the pen to stand up for the birds to have a little perch, and my handraised peacock, his name is Peep, jumped on the log and I kept rolling it and he walked on it as it was rolling like people do that log rolling thing in the water! It was so fun to watch him do that and he stayed on for a while before he had had enough and he jumped off. It was very funny!

 

[Ghostbelly]

do they have to imprint on you for them to think your their mommy?

 

[Ghostbelly]

did you get your peacocks from that website you showed me MinxFox?

 

[MinxFox]

They don't have to really imprint on you to think you are their mommy, but they do probably have to imprint to some human to be more inclined to following around people and being extremely friendly. As a peachick Peep would follow anyone around even if they were not me. Of course he would also follow me around too. He lets anyone pet him too, not just me. This year when my peachicks started hatching in the incubator it was at night and so I was really tired and also kind of sick so I couldn't really be there when they hatched. Because they didn't really see a person for a while they might have imprinted on each other a bit. I did spend some time with them, but a lot less then I did with Peep, so they were tame as in I can hand feed them but not tame as in holding, petting, training, etc.

You have to be careful with imprinting. Some people say that if a male peachick is imprinted to you when he gets to be an adult he could see you as a threat and because he is not afraid of you he may attack you durring the breeding season. There is a lady locally that has a white peacock she has to keep penned up because when he was a chick she always let him sit on her head. Now that he is a fully grown peacock he still thinks it is okay to perch on her head so she has to watch out for him flying onto her head. My rule is I try not to push it. When Peep was younger the only time I would pick him up was to put him back into the pen or take him out. I didn't want to baby him too much. I did baby him when he was a little baby, but when he got older I let him mature. I pet him a lot, but he likes it and about 98% of the time I start petting him because he "asked" me to by comming up and gently pecking on my fingers until I started petting his face. Peep has been displaying for my foot though and today he ran at me making a mating call...The first time he did that was a few days ago and it took me by surprise because I was throwing out feed and he was standing there displaying and he made a matting call and grabbed onto my leg so I pushed him away. So in my case an imprinted peacock means a peacock that thinks you are a pottential mate.

Luckily I have seen him display at actual peahens, but instead of making a mating call at them he just runs up to them and kicks at them and they fly off. Even if you can't train them to do tricks and things, they are still fun when they are really tame. It would be cool to train a peacock to display on command..

I got my peafowl from some local breeders who aren't even members of the United Peafowl Association...I don't even think they know about it...The breeders on the website I gave you are within a good driving distance from us so I perfer to get mine from closer people, although I might want to get some peafowl from this place: http://www.rockingbabranch.us/peafowl/index.php Because they are the closest large scale peafowl breeder to us. My first peafowl were from a local zoo that closed down. I got 1 peahen from a kid who had just a few peafowl, then I got most of my birds from a man in Alabama who has lots of cool birds and he takes great care of them. Not all backyard breeders are good, but there are some pretty good ones that I go to. I haven't gotten a new peafowl in a few years though. All the ones I get now come from my adult birds.