In all seriousness I would like to express a couple of opinions based upon the wretchedly laughable continuation of this thread:
1. I do believe that lack of protein intake during the laying season can cause the curled feet and toes issue. This is an issue when people collect the eggs and make the hens produce the maximum number of eggs she will produce. We do that. Increasing our protein content last year cured the problem in all but the last 50 or so eggs.
2. Humidity, I believe, or lack thereof, during incubation is the other big cause of curled toes and feet. Not so experienced with this.
3. If anyone thinks that mice cannot exist with peafowl, you need to come down here. There ain't no way on gods green earth that we can get rid of all the mice. I don't lose any peafowl to the mice. Peafowl will kill the mice, however. At one time we used lots of the closed traps. Then we witnessed a peahen killing a mouse. Now we actually flood the underground nests on a regular basis as the only control.
I've got to agree on the mice! We've tried everything we can think of and we cannot keep them out. Our food is stored in custom made steel bins with lids that I can barely lift so it is safe in there, however once the food is in the pen the birds throw it all over the place. The mice then show up to clean up the excess. Our Peas have never shown any inclination to kill or eat mice,( our barn cats don't do a real bang up job either). I cannot beat them...... so I have joined them. Meet Shrimpy, threw him under the brooder light after all the chicks were done for the year, guess I wasn't quite ready to close up shop for the season. He now lives in a condo in my bedroom.
