Tell Me Everything Peafowl

[chickenlover09]

Hi everyone! I'm getting some feed later this afternoon, and the feed bin has a few young peacocks for sale! I've always wanted one but never knew much anything about them. Please answer my questions!

-Can you house peafowl and chickens together? My coop is very clean, and none of my chickens have ever gotten majorly sick before.

- Do/can they eat the same feed?


- How loud are they? I would probably only get one. I'm currently not living on our farm, so I do have neighbors. None of the neighbors have ever complained about the chickens. I'm sure if they tried to, I would complain right back about their loud pack of dogs or their blasting music.

- Are they aggresive? I don't ever have a lot of people over at my house (just the gardner). I mean, would they be aggresive with me?

- Anything else you think I should know!



Thanks for any help!

 

[Garden Peas]

Hi everyone! I'm getting some feed later this afternoon, and the feed bin has a few young peacocks for sale! I've always wanted one but never knew much anything about them. Please answer my questions!

-Can you house peafowl and chickens together? My coop is very clean, and none of my chickens have ever gotten majorly sick before.

- Do/can they eat the same feed?


- How loud are they? I would probably only get one. I'm currently not living on our farm, so I do have neighbors. None of the neighbors have ever complained about the chickens. I'm sure if they tried to, I would complain right back about their loud pack of dogs or their blasting music.

- Are they aggresive? I don't ever have a lot of people over at my house (just the gardner). I mean, would they be aggresive with me?

- Anything else you think I should know!



Thanks for any help!

#1 Recommendation -- do some research and figure out housing BEFORE you commit to peas. Yes, you can keep them with chickens (although some folks recommend against it), but the average chicken housing will not provide enough room. Peas are very good fliers, so you will need an outdoor pen much larger than one in which most folks keep chickens, otherwise your birds may fly away or be eaten by predators.

It is possible to free range peafowl, but you would want to be there to get them started, not living elsewhere, and you need to carefully evaluate the predator situation (including hazards such as dogs and cars) before considering trying to free range. If you are just starting, you probably should be thinking about working with a pen.

It is unkind to the bird to only get one. Peafowl are very social and need to have other peas around.

Yes, the males can be very loud during breeding season, and some people find the noise disturbing (some of us actually like it). I would be worried about the neighbors taking some kind of action if they decide they don't like the birds -- like killing them, or letting the dogs kill them -- so please do some research first.

There's a lot of info here on BYC, and we just wrote lots of answers for someone else who was contemplating peas and didn't know much about them, so please search the threads -- that's a really quick way to get answers.

Good luck! Proceed slowly!

 

[DylansMom]

Hi everyone! I'm getting some feed later this afternoon, and the feed bin has a few young peacocks for sale! I've always wanted one but never knew much anything about them. Please answer my questions!

-Can you house peafowl and chickens together? My coop is very clean, and none of my chickens have ever gotten majorly sick before. Peafowl need more room than chickens, what are the dimensions of your coop? If you get a male he will need a roost at least 5' off the ground(tail clearance).

- Do/can they eat the same feed? Peafowl need higher protein.


- How loud are they? I would probably only get one. I'm currently not living on our farm, so I do have neighbors. None of the neighbors have ever complained about the chickens. I'm sure if they tried to, I would complain right back about their loud pack of dogs or their blasting music. From Sept. thru March nobody would know you had them, April thru August, males will scream (mating call sounds like a woman screaming "Help") all hours of the day and night. Unlike Roosters they don't limit it to daylight hours.

- Are they aggresive? I don't ever have a lot of people over at my house (just the gardner). I mean, would they be aggresive with me? Hens are almost never aggressive, and usually the only males that are aggressive are ones who were imprinted on humans as chicks, they don't fear people so they will challenge them.

- Anything else you think I should know! Not a bird I would recommend jumping into. Do some research first, the Peafowl Stickies are a good place to start. These birds can live up to 30 years so they are a long term commitment. If you free range them, there is no guarantee they will stick around, many people do it successfully, but many also lose theirs as well, they are strong flyers and can cover considerable distances. People also seem to think they are valuable and often times they will not attempt to find a wayward Peas owners so they can return it.



Thanks for any help!