It’s difficult to know where to begin.. We’ve had chickens, ducks and geese for many years but are new to peafowl. Last year Neighbor A’s peacock decided to wander down the hill off her property and take up new digs at Neighbor B’s house on the other side of me. His routine for all these months has been to hang out during the day at Neighbor B’s then cross the pasture into my yard in the evening to roost in a tree above my barn. Neighbor A had made numerous attempts to capture him without success and finally threw in the towel even though he had abandoned a wife and 4 chicks and was desperately wanted back home. It appeared that he had become a permanent fixture here and on a whim a couple of weeks ago my daughter and I decided to get him a new girlfriend. We found a peahen for sale on CL and drove 120 miles round trip to pick her up from a lovely farm. We’ve kept her in the barn so she could acclimate to her surroundings and she and Mr. P could visualize and get used to each other, but he frankly seemed disinterested. Then, 2 days after she arrived, Mr. P took off! The next morning Neighbor A posted on FB that her long-wandering deadbeat-dad peacock had returned to his original family after a year’s absence! So while we’re happy for them, we now have a lonely peahen that we would like to keep and no local resources for friends of her own species. My inclination is to buy hatching eggs off eBay, and I’m sure we will have broody hens this spring that could incubate them, but I’m wondering if it’s feasible for a goose to hatch them instead (a gander has raised ducklings and chicks in the past). I would never think to ask except that one of my Toulouse geese has been setting incessantly on an empty nest for over a month and has been a wonderful mom in the past. I can’t find any information about this ever having been done and wonder if it’s a realistic consideration. Are peafowl eggs comparable in size to goose eggs? If not I wouldn’t attempt it, as this goose has tried to hatch duck eggs and broken them because of her weight.
