Artistickatt
Chirping
Hey everyone!
Some of you may remember me popping in with questions over the past year while I was figuring out peafowl ownership in real time. This forum was a huge help when I was starting out, so thank you for that.
Quick reintro: I'm Shandra, Central Texas, small ranch. Four semi-free-range peafowl, roughly 9 months old now:
Han and Leia came from a breeder as month-old chicks. I hatched Morpheus and Neo from shipped eggs about eleven weeks later.
The backstory, for anyone who wasn't here for it: my husband said "absolutely no chickens." He did not say "no poultry." I found the loophole and got peacocks instead. He was not amused.
Three days before the chicks arrived, I broke six ribs in a car wreck.
I picked them up anyway.
It's been that kind of year.
So I finally did the thing I kept threatening to do — I started writing it all down. The blog is called The Ranch of Questionable Choices (ranchofquestionablechoices.com).
It's the whole first year — the origin story, the bedtime wars, the bullying I caught on security cameras, the night I stood in sleet with a stick trying to get two birds off a roof, and what happened when I tried every genre of music to calm a screaming chick at dusk.
Not a care guide. More like incident reports from someone who planned carefully and then watched it all go sideways anyway. If you've raised peafowl, you'll probably recognize most of it.
Still learning, still lurking, still asking questions when things get weird. Which is often.
Nice to be back properly!
— Shandra
(part-time artist, part-time web developer, full-time peafowl wrangler)
ranchofquestionablechoices.com
Some of you may remember me popping in with questions over the past year while I was figuring out peafowl ownership in real time. This forum was a huge help when I was starting out, so thank you for that.
Quick reintro: I'm Shandra, Central Texas, small ranch. Four semi-free-range peafowl, roughly 9 months old now:
- Han Solo — IB peacock. Guard dog energy. Maybe three brain cells. Honks at shadows.
- Leia — IB peahen (white). Plays the sweet worried hen. Actually runs a protection racket.
- Morpheus — IBBS peahen. Imprinted on me despite my best efforts. Loud. Headstrong.
- Neo — Pied IBBS peacock. Morpheus's sibling. Loyal sidekick. Gorgeous.
Han and Leia came from a breeder as month-old chicks. I hatched Morpheus and Neo from shipped eggs about eleven weeks later.
The backstory, for anyone who wasn't here for it: my husband said "absolutely no chickens." He did not say "no poultry." I found the loophole and got peacocks instead. He was not amused.
Three days before the chicks arrived, I broke six ribs in a car wreck.
I picked them up anyway.
It's been that kind of year.
So I finally did the thing I kept threatening to do — I started writing it all down. The blog is called The Ranch of Questionable Choices (ranchofquestionablechoices.com).
It's the whole first year — the origin story, the bedtime wars, the bullying I caught on security cameras, the night I stood in sleet with a stick trying to get two birds off a roof, and what happened when I tried every genre of music to calm a screaming chick at dusk.
Not a care guide. More like incident reports from someone who planned carefully and then watched it all go sideways anyway. If you've raised peafowl, you'll probably recognize most of it.
Still learning, still lurking, still asking questions when things get weird. Which is often.
Nice to be back properly!
— Shandra
(part-time artist, part-time web developer, full-time peafowl wrangler)
ranchofquestionablechoices.com
