Show off your Peas!

[margaret8]

I don't think I taught him he just ate it!!

 

[zazouse]

Zaz needs your birds to teach hers to eat up all of the poisonous spiders. I remember Zaz mentioning that she has had some bad spider bites several times.

Spiders bit me cause i am disturbing their home when i am clearing and cleaning, heck i got bit by a male golden orb spider day before yesterday when i ran into the females web making my rounds on the 4-wheeler, now i got a itchey swelling spot right at the base of my ear

thank god it was not the female she was crawling on my hat went straight into my hair, like to never got her out , then she kept running back towards me when i get her off

The peas , guineas, chickens geese and ducks will eat the spiders if they see them and can reach them but there are just to many to get them all, they have their place here i just gotta keep them off of me and out of my hair

 

[zazouse]

I can't tell you how it would work to put the hen with one male and pen the other two males together but at my place one male has all the hens and the rest of the males fight with each other once the head male took all the hens.
Mine are free ranged so i do not know if males being penned together during breeding season will be ok or not. but when they start the chase they can be relentless so it is important that they can get away from each other when things get to heated.

 

[dheltzel]

I suppose I'll find out what works best when the time comes. I'm hoping the 3 might just live together for the next year, they may not be breeding in the spring (less than 2 years old then). If the hens aren't receptive, maybe the cocks won't see the need to fight, or at least not to the point of causing damage.

I am very fearful of losing a cock to predators, or just wandering off, if we free-range one. One other option is to put the lone male into a smaller coop (only 8x8) near the house, maybe with a chicken or turkey hen for company. Certainly not optimal, but perhaps better than being harassed constantly by another peacock.

 

[DylansMom]

I suppose I'll find out what works best when the time comes. I'm hoping the 3 might just live together for the next year, they may not be breeding in the spring (less than 2 years old then). If the hens aren't receptive, maybe the cocks won't see the need to fight, or at least not to the point of causing damage.

I am very fearful of losing a cock to predators, or just wandering off, if we free-range one. One other option is to put the lone male into a smaller coop (only 8x8) near the house, maybe with a chicken or turkey hen for company. Certainly not optimal, but perhaps better than being harassed constantly by another peacock.

If it were me, I'd consider separating the boys from the girls. That young the 3 boys probably wouldn't fight at all if that "temptation" were removed. There is no guarantee that a coming 2 year old hen would be ready to breed anyway, a lot of mine don't lay at 2, but some do, just no way to know. The 2 white males in my avatar are 6 years old now and they have always been penned together, neither has ever been with a hen and they get along just fine. It would give you another year to figure out what you want to do. It is generally not a good idea to allow penned males to fight, at Zaz's place the losers can make a quick exit and find a safe place to recuperate, in a pen they cannot. Many years ago when I free ranged I had an older dominant male corner a younger male in a tractor shed and go off on him. The younger one couldn't escape and if I hadn't found them I think he would have ended up dying of stress and heat exhaustion/stroke. It was a hot day and while he didn't have many wounds his wings were dragging on the ground and he was panting terribly. When I got him into a pen he collapsed and laid there for over a day. Just a thought, if you aren't in a big rush to breed.

 

[margaret8]

Here is Big Blue he is 1 yr old, and here is Big Blue with Peep, he is 3 months old!

 

[Garden Peas]

I can't tell you how it would work to put the hen with one male and pen the other two males together but at my place one male has all the hens and the rest of the males fight with each other once the head male took all the hens.
Mine are free ranged so i do not know if males being penned together during breeding season will be ok or not. but when they start the chase they can be relentless so it is important that they can get away from each other when things get to heated.

Zaz these photos are amazing! My birds are penned, and while they snip and snipe at each other, it's nothing like this. They look like flying dragons in aerial combat

 

[Book Em Danno25]

Nice Pics!!!

 

[zazouse]

Thanks for the kudos, i love taking photos

My younger birds spar and the older ones stay out of it but seem to enjoy watching them.
so till yours get older like 3 they should be fine.
here are some young whites going at it with the older peas watching them.





Click on photo and then the original to see the larger more detailed photo

 

[Garden Peas]

My "older" boys hatched early in 2011, the hen and the "younger" boy hatched 2012... Hen laid fertile eggs this year, and there was some mild sparring over her, but they've all got the pecking order sorted out and nobody seems to want to fight it out very much, thank heavens!