Safe for Peas to eat?

[PavoFowl]

Hello all!

I am curious about what snacks are safe and not safe for peas to eat. My peas are 3 and a half months old.
They LOVE watermelon. My Pekins like to play and squish in the watermelon, but the Peas pick the rind spotless. They get super excited when they see me bringing it.

The only thing I remember for sure to NOT give peafowl was any part of an avocado. The flesh, skin, and seed (obviously!)
Is there anything in this spring mix that would make them sick?

 

[new 2 pfowl]

I don't think there's anything in spring mix that would be a problem. The gang here won't eat any of that purple lettuce stuff that's often in spring mix - go figure!

Baby arugula on its own is especially popular - it's one of the Treats of Choice for the Most Spoiled Boy, Peggy!

 

[zazouse]

That is fine for them

i grow all kinds of greens for mine in the winter and have a patch of collard greens that now come back year after year

it is a wonderful food source lots of nutrients.
Whole foods are always best for us and our birds, this world hace become to processed with what we eat and it show , all kinds of medical problems comming up even in our younger generation, way to much sodium,sugars fats and refined grains .

 

[zazouse]

Baby arugula on its own is especially popular - it's one of the Treats of Choice for the Most Spoiled Boy, Peggy!

My DH just purchased some arugula seeds yesterday, i am looking forwad to growing it , i have never tried it before.

 

[Garden Peas]

I am growing pole beans on the outside of the pea pen -- the bean plants are trimmed off by the birds wherever they can reach them through the fence, and they adore the green and yellow beans too

(I planted the pole beans as a treat for the birds and to help reduce boredom, so the whole point is for the bean plants to get eaten...) I would grow peas for the Peas the same way, but it is too hot here in the summer, and too cold in the winter, and too brief in the spring

But I am absolutely certain my Peas would love peas, especially the whole plant!

I have a large planter full of Swiss chard, which has been a huge hit. They get all the ratty and overgrown leaves, and they love it. (There's a lot of ratty leaves -- I finally discovered one of the dogs is trying to eat the chard.) It's a nutritional powerhouse, so I'm glad to share it with the peas. They love squashed cherry tomatoes.

I give the birds all the seeds from cantaloupes (along with some of the fruit), but I tend not to give them the rinds, unless I cut up small bits. I worry about choking as they gulp stuff down pretty fast, and cantaloupe rind is pretty tough. Same with other melons, like honeydews.

I've given them homegrown sprouts, and I just went last week and got some new, different kinds of sprout seeds to try. I've seen pictures of sprouting bins that folks have set up to grow and treat their chickens, and I think the peas would really like that if I got it going. I would not give large quantities of fresh, first growth alfalfa though, and don't plan to give large quantities of alfalfa sprouts, because I worry about the level of nitrogen. I think a little bit would be okay, but I'm not an expert on this.

I am not putting any of the vegetation from any of the solonacea family of plants into the pen -- no leaves or stems of tomatoes, peppers, potatoes or eggplant -- and no rhubarb. They are leaving the tomato plants that overgrew the pen mostly alone (it is reportedly poisonous, although I do not know how toxic it actually is) -- but I probably won't plant tomatoes quite so close to the pen next year. I'm glad they are not devouring it, for sure, or I'd feel like I needed to pull up the plants.

Oh, did I mention they are crazy for strawberries? But who isn't?

(In this house, unfortunately, all the strawberries come from the store...) The birds get the strawberry caps and some fruit. Also peach peels and apple peels, carrot peels (but I don't give them the chunky cut off ends unless they are diced up so they can't choke), and other fruit trimmings. I don't give potato peels (Solonacea again), and I don't give any onions or garlic, as I am concerned those could be toxic. Salad greens, yes, for sure I give them those, you betcha. The birds are trimming off any pumpkin tendrils and/or leaves that grow into the pen, ditto the watermelon plants, and I think those are all safe.

Who knows, maybe I worry too much about the birds choking?

But my birds are penned, not free ranging, so it's an artificial, confined environment to start with. There's other birds competing with them for the handouts, so they get pretty grabby and gobble stuff pretty fast just to beat out the other birds for the treats. It's not a bird wandering loose, with all day to decide whether to try to swallow something, it's the whole group, everyone trying to grab something first. So I worry that in that situation, they might accidentally try to swallow something that could choke them (like a big, unsquashed, too tough cherry tomato), without having had time to consider it, or tear it smaller, and then what would happen? I am so not ready to try the Heimlich maneuver on a panicking pea

If something is hard or tough, I try to make sure it is in a shape that won't block an airway.

I think edible flowers (think roses and squash blossoms) would be okay, but I would not plant a rose bush next to the pea pen, because of the chemicals that occasionally are required to treat the rose bushes. I bet lavender would be okay, but I would research it to double check before I planted it next to the pen.

Oh, and I almost forgot, boy do the peas ever love corn on the cob!

The cobs are too big to swallow, and it's a definite boredom-buster. They will chase the cobs around for quite awhile, getting after the bits of corn. Of course, they also love bread and scratch grains, so we have totally solved the stale bread problem at my house

But I don't give very much bread, and I don't give it very often, because I don't think it's all that healthy, so it's an occasional treat.

Hope this helps

 

[MinxFox]

@Garden Peas - Are you also on the UPA forum? If you are on the UPA forum then I saw your post about your plants growing along the pen fence and I really want to see photos of that if you have any. Even if you aren't the same person I would like to see photos. I tried growing scuppernongs on the peafowl's aviary fence but the peas wouldn't let the vine grow.

Peafowl eat almost anything. I am not sure about avocado being poisonous to them or not. The main poisonous plant list for birds seems to be geared to parrots (or at least the ones I have seen were), but I have put avocado in their pen a few times and they won't eat it so maybe it is poisonous to them. Peafowl seem to know naturally what they can and cannot eat, or at least mine seem to know so I don't really worry. This bush started growing in my pen and it was a lantana bush. The plant is poisonous and the seeds are probably the most poisonous part of the plant. I watched my peafowl eat some of the leaves and seeds off of the plant and they were fine. Then come to find out there are lantanas in the forests of India where peafowl are native to.

Here is a list of treats that I give my peafowl: http://www.bamboopeacock.com/Treats_for_Peafowl.html

I give them a lot of leftover food that we have. Spaghetti leftovers, pumpkin pie leftovers, they love sugar free yogurt, old bananas, old apples, etc. They don't seem to be fond of citrus though. Mine have never really eaten oranges or grapefruit.

Right now the main treat I am feeding my peafowl is cat food. It is a good treat because it gives them some good protein and they love it. They also really love blueberries.

 

[Book Em Danno25]

we give my peacocks lettuce, eggshells, tomatoes, cantalope, grain and cracked corn. All of it is safe.

 

[Garden Peas]

@Garden Peas - Are you also on the UPA forum? If you are on the UPA forum then I saw your post about your plants growing along the pen fence and I really want to see photos of that if you have any. Even if you aren't the same person I would like to see photos. I tried growing scuppernongs on the peafowl's aviary fence but the peas wouldn't let the vine grow.

Lol Busted!

Yes, for something like 3 1/2 years now, time flies, can you believe it? But things aren't so very lively there lately...

Sad to say that we had to move to the city and are crammed in a small house with a small yard that got crash-converted to keep the peas safe -- desperately hoping to improve the pen situation, but making do for now. (Every time I see more photos from zazouse, I turn green -- now THAT'S a garden!!! That place looks like heaven

)

Here's a few pix (I'm really embarrassed about the whole yard thing) --

When I first planted up here, there was nothing, aside from a few weeds. I couldn't stand not having a garden, and had all sorts of logistical problems (not to mention that someone stole my wonderful rototiller

that I had left down south) and then there was the problem with the dogs harassing the peas... What a mess. I grabbed some stepped planter frames and bagged garden soil, added lots of screws and a coat of wood sealer, and jammed in some seedlings and a few seeds. So it looked something like this:





You can't tell so much from the first pictures, but I deliberately overplanted -- I wanted things to be fairly dense, plus the dogs were pretty hard on it. Squash does better when it's not being used as a dog bed

So as the squash got squashed and re-squashed, I added more seeds & plants

Eventually I won a temporary victory with the squash -- before the powdery mildew got it -- it looked nice for awhile (below), and it is still producing, though now looks truly awful. It will be gone when the first frost hits, if it makes it that long.



The Swiss chard did well, in between the dogs eating it (Really??? Swiss chard? What's that about??? That's not even remotely dogfood!!!). I keep chopping off the outer leaves and tossing them in the pen. It grows back fast. Occasionally some makes it into the house

The cherry tomatoes went wild and not only climbed the fence, but smothered all the peppers and eggplant (they're sorta still under there, and I'm still picking them). You just never can tell what a cherry tomato plant will do if you haven't grown it before. This one (Sun Gold) turned out to be extremely vigorous... and prolific. it's a keeper for sure. But farther from the peas next time...



And speaking of peas... here's the bean-eating boy himself:





(MinxFox, do you happen to remember the photos I posted a couple years ago of the chick wearing shoes? This is him, all grown up

)



Do you see how he keeps the bean plants trimmed back to the exact distance he can reach through the fence? He does have some help from the others... but he's a bean-loving fool

My theory is, as long as he is nipping at the bean plants, he's too busy to be nipping anybody else in the pen. It is making for more peaceful peas... and since there are 3 boys, and only one girl (plus some rudely victimized hens), diversions are good

Here's the beans from another angle:



What you can't see is that the base of the beans is protected by the wood planter, so even though the beans are mowed, the plants keep growing back. After I saw how much they loved them, I made another late planting of beans in one of the other, lower boxes, but those are just totally gone.

I think there must be something to the tomato toxicity, because the tomato plants are not nearly as chewed up -- the peas nibble them, but mostly leave them alone. It may also partly be because the planter pot with the incredibly overcrowded tomatoes is a little taller than the stepped planter, and the bench/roost doesn't reach that far, so the tomatoes are harder to reach

But if I could live anywhere, it would be at Zazouse's place...

Those photos are incredible...

-- The Accidental Peahen

 

[MinxFox]

I love how you have planted around the pen! It is very beautiful and the peas obviously enjoy it! Yes, the UPA forum has been very slow. We are working on perhaps changing the domain of it, and maybe we can re-vamp the site. I think I would then be a moderator and I would start doing monthly peafowl videos for the forum and to keep it active we would ask people to recommend future video topics, answer certain questions in the video, etc. Just an idea but something I really want to work on. I really wish I knew more people in the UPA. I can never make it to the convention so I just haven't been able to meet everyone and I think the forum is a great place for everyone to meet especially if you aren't on facebook like me.

I think everyone dreams of having a place like Zazouse's.

Hopefully if I keep doing well in college and work hard I will be able to live on 120 acres that my parents have but are not going to live on. My mom wants to live on her bay property because she loves the idea of living on the water and I just love the idea of living on lots of land out in the country. We already know the next-door neighbor out there. He is a farmer and his wife works with horses for a living training them and boarding them, etc. They are really nice and said if I ever lived out there they would treat me like family so hopefully years from now I will be able to live over there.

I like your stepped planter maybe that is something I should try on the outside of the pen. I hung baskets of ferns on the pen fence and that looked nice but the ferns died in the winter and didn't really come back that well. Maybe I can find something pretty and cold hardy for the baskets.

 

[Garden Peas]

MinxFox, you are sweet, thanks!

Have you tried Bougainvillea on the outside of your peapen? I think it's nontoxic to birds (or only mildly toxic), and I wonder if you could train the canes up onto the sides with some plastic garden tape placed up higher than the peas could nibble? You are lucky to be able to keep anything alive in hanging pots -- it is too dry here -- so hanging pots are not really an option in this climate. Anyway, you could put some mint in a hanging pot -- it grows vigorously and is hard to kill. It will come back from the roots every year once it is established, even if you mow it to the ground... It can easily get out of control, so pots are a good way to confine it.

You also might just keep annuals in the hanging pots, and plan to replant them with something fresh and pretty every spring. There are lots of annuals that will sprout easily from seed, like marigolds, so it's not too expensive to replant. Last year, WalMart had "color bowls" which were loaded with flowers for less than what it would have cost me to buy flats or six-packs of seedlings, so I grabbed a few and split them back up, and dispersed the flowers throughout the garden.

I bet your dad could knock together some planter boxes pretty easily, and if you use recycled wood, it will save $$. I don't use "treated" lumber in planters to grow food, though

I just spray on some non-toxic wood sealer.

Something I have been thinking about doing is fixing a "treat box" for the birds -- I was thinking about a small version of the planter box, with a hinged wire cage over (like vinyl coated wire or field fencing, or maybe vertical tube, with a bunch of bean or pea seeds in the middle. The box would protect the base of the plant, and the birds could still nibble the leaves through the wire...