Show off your Peas!

[zazouse]

Welcome back.
Pretty babies thanks for sharing!

 

[MinxFox]

Beautiful Group

Hard to believe so much time has passed and Peep now has a train, hope Alto don't give him to much of a hard time during mating season, course i guess if he does it will be a good excuse for a new aviary .

I know I can't believe he is going to be three soon! Alto probably will give both Peep and Frosty (mainly Peep) some grief. That is already my excuse for more aviaries. I found a video the other day that I filmed last year showing Alto chase around Peep. Frosty was somewhat in on it too. At the end both Alto and Frosty start calling as if to claim their victory or something. I will have to add an intro to it and show it on here as an example of what happens when you have several peacocks in one pen.

Great Pictures, Zaz why did you get rid of Chickens and Guineas?
Mini Great Shots, I would love to see more of your pen, Looks nice and looks big also.
Blue, Same here Pheasants are outside all day.

Thanks I am getting very frustrated with the pen right now... One of the roosts is wobbly and leaning very badly, and the netting is horrible. My plants in there look so nice but they will have to be trimmed back so that we can replace the netting. Part of the issue is probably that we didn't start off with covers on the wooden posts, but also I think I just have very thin netting. I am happy with the size of the pen though. It is around 40x50ft. and in the center it is 15ft tall. There are two attachments but I am not sure about the extra ft. they add...Both of them are shelters and one can be closed off.
This is my favorite photo of the pen.


Here is one angle showing one of the logs I have in the aviary. I put food on the logs for the peafowl. It is hard to show in a photo how big the clump of bamboo is, but it is very tall and it grows several feet out of the netting.


This is an older photo, when the aviary was very new and the bamboo was just a few little canes.


The view from the bench outside of the aviary with Peep pacing because he wants to see me.


This is another older photo with my deceased peacock Dragon in the small attached pen. I can separate birds with this pen. The roosts in there I just slide in through the fence so sometimes I switch the roosts around in there for some variety for the peas. The peahens sometimes like to nest in those dog boxes. Believe it or not, my very first peafowl pen was half the size of that small black pen. My second pen was that whole black pen (made up of two dog kennels you buy at the store).


Yet another old photo...Dragon is the peacock in this one too. This is when the aviary still grew grass...Hopefully I will be able to get it to do that again soon...


This photo was taken in maybe 2011...


This was something I made when I was thinking about where to put a new pen. I decided not to fence off that smaller yellow area because when the peafowl get out, when they come back they always go to that little area between the pen and it is easy to get them back in the pen from there, so I decided it would be best left open. The larger yellow area is what I am working on (very slowly) right now. I think it will be 20x60 ft.

There are three T posts in the aviary that the peafowl roost on at night. There is a long metal pole running a good distance of the pen that the peafowl like to perch on. This pole was part of an old fence that used to be there because originally the area for this peafowl pen was a fence for an old overgrown garden. It worked perfectly because there was a hose there so I have a hose inside the peafowl pen which makes watering the plants and filling up the water tub easy. If only the new pens could have that!

 

[zazouse]

Redoing stuff is never fun but once you get started it can become fun especial when you see how much fun the peas are having with just the smallest of changes like new roost or stumps.etc..

 

[MinxFox]

Releasing them into the new pen is my favorite part! I like watching them explore the new pen and try out the new roosts. The peacocks will almost always start displaying right away.

 

[Joe.G]

Your Bamboo Grew that much in 2 years? I really do need to get some. Nice pen, I wish I could have grass in mine.

 

[MinxFox]

It is about 4-6 or so years now I think... But yes it really took off a lot in just two years. By the third year it starts to look really nice. Year after year it looks nicer and the new shoots get bigger and taller with each year. It is now almost touching the branches of the big oak tree limb that hangs out over the pen. Bamboo is I think the fastest growing plant or at least one of the fastest. Whatever you do, get the clumping bamboo. If you get the running kind, it might be pretty at first, but eventually it might spread too much. That being said, many people have the running and love it. The place I buy my bamboo from is called Boo For You. They are a local bamboo garden and the owner has a huge variegated type of running bamboo. It spreads very far distances but he cares for all the plants enough that nothing gets out of control. You can kick over new shoots very easily and they will die. The bamboo makes great shade for the peafowl and it stays green all year round. My start in getting peafowl is closely connected to bamboo so that is why I love the bamboo a lot and why I named my peafowl business "The Bamboo Peacock". Bamboo is very easy to grow. The guy I bought it from was telling me what fertilizer to buy to put around it and all this stuff but all I do is around the beginning of spring or any time really I dump a whole bunch of peafowl poo around the shoots. The bamboo is great for letting you know when it really needs water. The leaves will fold up showing you their lighter colored undersides and you will know that it needs to be watered. Large pots of bamboo can be expensive. I went with a very small pot with just two or three small stalks which was cheaper. I would say by year 2 or year 3 it was producing 12 plus shoots in one year. I have three total clumps - One that we got from a friend (I have neglected it because it is outside the pen), the other is a yellow and green clump that is a bit smaller just because it gets less sun, and the third is this one pictured that is my largest clump:

I keep the peafowl's water near the bamboo so that in the summer the shade from the bamboo keeps the water cool. Sometimes I cut a few of the canes. You can cut them and use them as cane poles for fishing. Dead bamboo leaves are very pretty. I have considered trying to put some bricks or something around the bamboo to keep the leaves from blowing away and having a patch of lots of bamboo leaves for the peafowl to scratch around in. I will show you a photo of a bamboo forest in Alabama...The bamboo forest consist of running bamboo that is probably a form of timber bamboo because it is so huge. I love visiting this bamboo forest. It is fun climbing around on the bamboo and dead bamboo makes a neat snapping noise when you walk on it. Of course this photo also shows how overwhelming large running bamboo can be if you plant it.


Here are some photos from today and from a few days ago...
Damsel relaxing.


Alto


My gang of whites!


Butterfly feathers


My silly Peep.


Shyanne perched on a corner perch. She likes to jump up there when I am getting food out of the metal cans for them. I guess she likes to see what is on the menu before everyone else.


The lighting was really making their crests glow today and I got a good photo of Damsel's crest all glowy. It is like a halo! I really love the pieds...


"Hey, stop eating my food!"


Ice


I got up on the ladder and took a few photos...


Peep flew up onto the stump while I was up on the ladder.


He started preening...You can see where the stump is rotting. I am really sad that it is rotting. I really like this log...


More preening...


Alto was relaxing on the metal pole today. Even with it being cold out they will sit up there. I thought the metal would feel too cold.


Brother and sister.


Peep staring at me. He probably wants me to come down to pet him.


Close up of Peep.


Close up of Alto. Alto has darker eyes than Peep.


Frosty


My new bird! It wears bows!

 

[BYC-user-174785]

That is a really cool picture!

Here are some photos from today and from a few days ago...
Damsel relaxing.

This reminds me of my India Blue peahen. She is a beautiful peahen.

Alto

I really like all of the colors here. His gorgeous train and the greens and reds in the background.

My gang of whites!


Butterfly feathers

I like these feathers but usually by the time they molt them they get pretty rough.

My silly Peep.

Peep is so friendly. Do you think him being so friendly helps your other peafowl come and eat out of your hand?

Shyanne perched on a corner perch. She likes to jump up there when I am getting food out of the metal cans for them. I guess she likes to see what is on the menu before everyone else.


The lighting was really making their crests glow today and I got a good photo of Damsel's crest all glowy. It is like a halo! I really love the pieds...


"Hey, stop eating my food!"


Ice


I got up on the ladder and took a few photos...


Peep flew up onto the stump while I was up on the ladder.


He started preening...You can see where the stump is rotting. I am really sad that it is rotting. I really like this log...


More preening...


Alto was relaxing on the metal pole today. Even with it being cold out they will sit up there. I thought the metal would feel too cold.


Brother and sister.

He has such a nice, long train. Much longer than my five year old white peacock. It is very nice when it first grows in, and by the time he molts it will be really visibly how dirty their feathers get since the new feathers are so much whiter.

Peep staring at me. He probably wants me to come down to pet him.


Close up of Peep.

Such nice colors that I dearly miss.

Close up of Alto. Alto has darker eyes than Peep.


I really like both of these portrait pictures.



My new bird! It wears bows!

I really like these pictures! Maybe I should send down my peafowl to you so that they can enjoy some sunshine. The peacocks have grown so fast, now there will be plenty of trains to enjoy.

 

[MinxFox]

Before Peep came along they all ate out of my hand. It is all thanks to Ice really. Since she was my first peahen I taught her to eat from my hand long before I got all the others. I think she helped show the others it was okay to take food from my hand, but mainly I think I have gained all of their trust. Younger birds can be harder to gain the trust of although peachicks raised by tame peahens are more trusting. When Smarty was a chick I would hand feed him and Crooked Beak some meal worms in a corner so that they didn't have to fight the adults for the treats. It can be tough on peachicks growing up in a pen full of adults. I would say that the spalding white siblings brought a new element to feeding which is snatching things out of my hand as quick as they can. Now most of the birds like to snatch stuff from me. Peep has gotten Alto more interested in me. When Peep comes up to me to be pet, Alto walks over and pecks at my fingers too, but unlike Peep he won't let me pet him after he pecks me, and he pecks hard so he is not as fun as Peep.

I am enjoying Frosty's train while I can...I figure when summer comes all it will take is a few rains and his train will have dirt splotches on it unless if by then I have him in a new pen which will have grass.

 

[zazouse]

 

[zazouse]

This is Mr Tubbs, he is one of the sad peas i got last year, my how he has grown and is so proud of himself.



this was when i got him