Plans or changes you wil make for 2014?

[casportpony]

I think wing bands and zip ties are the best bet. The wing bands tell the story but leg bands let you see on an instantaneous basis without having to catch the bird.

You're so right! My six month old chicks are now outside and they all have zip ties or spiral bands and if any of them start to look iffy I'll be ably to identify them easily that way. Hmmm... I'm still going to use wingbands next season, but maybe I'll also use zip ties.

 

[BYC-user-174785]

I was planning on buying from National Band Co. I will have to buy the metal leg bands for my peafowl that are not wing banded. Anyone know about the sizes?

 

[frenchblackcopper]

Blue Creek,do as I did and drag some metric wrenches out to them while on the perch at night to see which size goes around the peas leg with a wee bit of room right above their spur,,,and get us a pic please???

 

[MinxFox]

• Buy better netting and use Frisbees to keep posts from breaking the netting.
• Re-do the netting on my current aviary, fix 1 roost that has started to lean.
• Set up a trail camera to see what comes around the peafowl pen at night.
• Install hot wire all around the aviary.
• Make 2 or three more aviaries and begin landscaping them. One aviary needs a nice covered area with a dim light.
• Get a pair or one imported Pavo Muticus Muticus from Josh and put it in one of the new aviaries. I would like the green peafowl aviary to have some clumping bamboo in it. I might research the environment the Muticus Muticus are from and theme the aviary like their environment.
• Get more stumps to put in aviaries. My current stumps are starting to rot.
• Sell Smarty - One of my coming two year old peacocks.
• Think about making a sign to go on each aviary like "Aviary 1" or "Green Peafowl Aviary" something like that.
• Update website with article about making the new aviaries.
• Update website to have a Pavo Muticus Muticus page if I get some...
• Make more peafowl videos.
• Write more articles for the UPA and for my website.
• Lose zero birds to predators this year.
• Start a garden that will feed the peafowl. (lettuce, cabbage, carrots, etc)
• Get a good photo of the white squirrel that visits the peafowl aviary to eat their food.

I have been drawing a lot of aviary designs. Someday I hope I have a setup like the one I have drawings of.

 

[frenchblackcopper]

Minx,you have a large agenda to accomplish there. And I thought for 2014 mine was big!! Sounds like a pea Palace Florida edition is in the works.

 

[destinduck]

1) Build a new 20x20 honeymoon pen for goldilocks and my 3 year old green.2) Finish chainlink fencing the remainder of my big pen, 3) Finish the rest of my plastic hardware cloth aroun the bottom so chicks and ducklings cant escape or get shocked by the hotwire. 3) Build a hut and roost for the peafowl to get out of the weather if they want. 4) Make a couple covered feeding stations.

 

[MinxFox]

Minx,you have a large agenda to accomplish there. And I thought for 2014 mine was big!! Sounds like a pea Palace Florida edition is in the works.

I would love to have as many breeding pens as you have, but I know with more pens means more time having to walk in and out of the pens. I have a hose in my current aviary and it would be nice if we could have hoses in every aviary but I am not sure if that will happen. I have been drawing several "dream aviaries" in my Drawing 2 sketch book and today was my final for that class and my teacher commented how he really liked the aviary drawings. If only making a new aviary was as easy as drawing the plans for one!

This is my finals week and after Thursday I will be out for a while. I am sooo ready to get started on fixing up the current aviary and making more. Just this week I noticed something has been trying to dig into my pen!!! Yet another thing that will need to be addressed. It might be a coyote...Whatever it is, it is digging right at the corner of the door to the pen. I keep filling the hole in again and trying to block it off with some plastic.

There is a neighbor with some nice green grass right now. I think it is ryegrass. Every time I drive by their yard - which by the way has lots of cool tropical plants like a forest of bananas - I dream about what it would be like to have nice green grassy pens for the birds. Getting grass to always grow in their aviaries is definitely one of my goals...Sid from Texaspeafowl helped answer some of my questions about how he keeps all of his aviaries nice and grassy.

 

[frenchblackcopper]

Minx,one way to slow down predator digging is to make then have to dig so far to get in,they either give up or you catch them in the act. One way of course is to bury chain link fence directly under where your wall fence meets the ground,Of course since your aviary is already in place,trying to dig a deep skinny trench under or very close to an existing fence can become a real chore.One easy way tho,is if you can locate some old chain link fence,perhaps 4' high.Use a bolt cutter and then cut the 4' width so you now have 2 pieces,each only 2' wide,,for instance if you found a 50' piece of chain link fence 4' high,splitting it in 2' would now give you 100' total. You then lay this flat on the ground as close as you can get to your outside wall fence. If you have a rainy season in the spring,if you can get this laid down,then use a lawn roller to push it into soft or wet dirt,within no time grass will be growing thru it and since it's even with the existing ground,you won't notice it by walking on it. When we built our dog kennels I rented a trencher which made setting posts with hog panel pieces stood up and cut to fit in the trench that was 2' deep. I also laid cattle panels down so there would be about 2.5' on each side of the wall-pen division fence.For a dog to dig into another run next to them,they would have to begin about 3' away from the wall fence,dig down at least 3' to get under the buried stood up hog panels,and then another 3' to be past the other cattle panel on the ground in the other pen. To dog a hole this deep,and this far would take them all day,we have not had any problems in 10 years,but I know other dog breeders that has lost dogs when a female in heat is in one pen,and another female is in the next run,,not in heat.Two littermate sisters of over 5 years old,ended when one female was in heat,and dug her way into the next run,and killed her littermate sister.Both dogs were fully titled,and very,very expensive. All there was between them was a wall fence,,if something like what I have in place was there,the owner would have been back home before any harm was done.Digging takes time,and because your blocking one spot,whatever it is will just move over 4'-5' and start digging again.If your entire perimeter extends outward 2'-3' from your wall fence,they may give up once they feel heavy wire under their digging paws.

 

[MinxFox]

I was hoping I wouldn't have to have buried fencing but it looks like I might have to do that. Whatever is doing the digging hasn't moved on to another spot. It is targeting just that one area at the door. I don't know if the coyotes smelled the dog and catfish chow I have been feeding the peafowl and wanted to eat some too. My mom recently gave me two small bags of dog food that our dog doesn't like to eat and it does seem like around that time when I started giving them the dog food the digging started.

Thanks for your help! I guess that will be another thing on my list...

 

[AugeredIn]

Although the buried fence that FBC suggests will stop anything that digs, we have used both galvanized chicken wire and galvanized 1/4" hardware cloth with great success. I worried about the longevity and durability of both, but nothing has gotten through yet. They have both been in the ground four years now.

I doubt seriously that your problem is coyotes. They rarely spend more than an instant attempting to get into anything even if they get over their fear of entering areas that smell of humans. More likely your problem is raccoons, skunks and dogs.

Raccoons are not persistent in my experience. Don't get me wrong, they will look at every nook and cranny for an easy entrance. And they will test materials, but they will not spend a bunch of time trying to work through materials. Skunks are the same way and will fit through even a smaller hole. Skunks will not kill the birds, they just will eat the eggs.

Dogs are just another problem all together.