Peafowl update with pictures!

MinxFox

Crowing
9 Years
Sep 16, 2010
4,117
343
326
Pensacola, FL
I got back from Impact yesterday, a 5 day Christian event on the Lipscomb campus in Tennessee, to find that Peep has grown a lot in just five days! Peep is already has a crest coming in and is very tall now, so I am wondering if Peep is a boy...I am still not sure. Anyways here are some pictures.

Peep makes the pen really messy.
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Here is Peep in my hand, compare this to the older photo below of Peep to see just how much Peep has grown!
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This shows both sides of Peep with his/her nice white wing feathers. You can also see how scruffy Peep looks, I guess it still doesn't know how to preen its wing feathers that well?
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Adult Peafowl

Pip
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Dragon next to my clumping bamboo (he was lying around in the shade it creates when I went out to feed them).
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Alto walking through the bahia grass. Bahia grass isn't fun in your yard because it grows so fast, but for the peafowl pen I love it because the peafowl grab the end of the grass and rake their beak across it to get all the little black seeds off to eat. They really like that grass and it makes the pen look all green so I like it too.
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Alto walks away when Dragon comes up. Dragon is really letting Alto know he is dominant lately because Alto is getting closer to being a threat.
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Damsel is still doing well on the nest. We put some water next to her and I throw bread and other treats to her too. She doesn't pant much in that shade. She would be even more hidden if it were not for her being pied. She pulled out some of her breast feathers and my dad said he has seen turkey hens do that and it is so that they can get their bare skin on the eggs. It seems that Damsel is doing a great job and knows what she is doing.
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And Ice didn't want to be photographed, just fed so I don't have pictures of her for today but she is also doing well.
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No I am still not sure how many eggs she is on.

Here is one I forgot to show, this is Alto. His feathers are looking really vibrant and colorful as of lately. Whenever I find a feather he has shed it is really beautiful to look at.
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MinxFox - do you have your peas free-ranging or are they penned? What made the hen nest where she did - was it an area that you dolled up for her or did she choose it herself? Just curious for future planning here. Just starting to think about where & how my hen is going to nest. Mine free-range, but may go in lockdown next spring...lots more research to do!!
 
My peafowl are in a 40x50 ft. pen with 15ft. high netting and six foot fencing. I plant a lot of things in the pen and also a lot of things grow there naturally. I am always looking for tough plants the peafowl can't destroy. The netting is hard to see in photographs so it looks like they are not in a pen. I plan on free-ranging my peachick when it gets older and Alto and Pip too. Really the only reason I incubated this year was because the two year old peahens were not sure what to do with the eggs at first so they just abandoned them. That is how I ended up with Peep I found Peep's egg next to a tree in the pen and incubated it and now I have my first peachick!

I wasn't planning on taking away all their eggs because I wanted to give them the chance to raise their own peachicks, but didn't know about Damsel laying. I just walked into the pen one day and found her under a plant that grows all over the pen wild like a verbena sort of. Anyways it gets pretty big in the summer and the peafowl use it for shade and Damsel just scratched a hole in the dirt and laid her eggs there, which I haven't even caught a glimpse of yet so I have no idea how many she is on. She has done it all herself I didn't do anything to make that location any different. Peahens do like bushes or tall grass to nest in though so they are hidden. I think the shade it provides is good for her too.

I can't help you about free-ranging and nesting, I have never been through that but a friend who we get peafowl from catches all her free-range peahens and puts them in pens for breeding season.
 
They got to day 30 and were still no good, I cracked them all open and they were all bad. One had a very small chick inside, but it died very early...That was the bronze egg that I saw the blood ring in.
 

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