What is your free-range setup?

[MinxFox]

Lets see what everyone does about free-ranging peafowl (answer as many or as few as you want):

1. How many peafowl do you free-range?
2. What varieties do you free-range?
3. Do you free-range year round or do you pen them up for breeding?
4. Do you ever sell free-range birds?
5. Do you let the peahens raise their own peachicks?
6. Are your free-rangers tame?
7. How long have you been free-ranging peafowl?
8. What are some bad things that have happened due to free-ranging peas?
9. What is your favorite free-range story?
10. Do you have names for all or a few of your free-range peafowl?

For me I free-range a giant flock of 0, but I do like free-ranging and want to do it agian.

 

[6littlechickies]

We are a big zero to all of them too

It'd be nice sometime to free range but have too many animals around and dogs (not mine) that will get them or try to.

 

[Kev]

None now, do you want answers based on previous experiences(I have a lot!)?

 

[MinxFox]

Ooh sure Kev, I still remember that story you told me of when you free-ranged greens!

 

[Kev]

Haha yep!

Will have to generalize on some answers due to number of birds and years(30) involved:

1. Total probably 400 ish. A lot were young & yearlings set loose until sale and not all at once, 10-40 each year generally. At childhood house, was average of 25 permanent birds(some birds disappeared, some years peahens successfully raised lots of babies etc).
2. All I got eventually had some free ranging. All India colors, except cameo(never liked this color), and newer ones like charcoal, violeta(never had those). Also spaldings of low and high percentages and pure greens. YES I "dared" to let pure ones free range...

3. Most free ranges were totally free range, never penned until either disappeared somehow or for sale/sold off.
4. Yep. A lot were under year old & yearlings. Usually how it went was have them walk into an empty pen then kept in there until sale or captured right away for someone who wanted 'this or that bird'.
5. Yep. The peahens would try their best to be mothers.. but they usually lost quite a lot of their babies. At childhood house, peahens often re-nested twice or thrice because they lost all of their first or second round of chicks. No pen or anything so could not confine peahens with chicks for first few weeks before letting free again- survival rate improved immensely after doing this, almost 100% survival if mother and babies were confined and released when babies were at least 1 1/2 or 2 months old. You didn't ask- a lot of peachicks were hatched and raised by chickens on free range also.
6. Variable. Basically all 'trusted' me, some were much more friendly/tame than others.. individual thing. Some did not mind strangers, most were wary of strangers to varying degrees, some would have nothing to do with strangers. Mostly due to not many visitors/most visitors being buyers, probably cause a negative correlation this way...
7. 30ish years.
8. Several disappeared for unknown reasons, some were lost to bobcats, some were chased/captured when seen outside my yard(had neighbors tell me they see people passing by stop to try catching peafowl that were out by the road. A few people deliberately tried to run them over if they were on the road), some neighbors apparently trapped and kept some when they wandered into their yards.
9. My main one is visual- my old house was in a hilly area, lots of old mature trees, with avocado and macadamia nut groves. Every day when I came home from school, they would come running or (my favorite part) they would fly/glide in from wherever they were during the day. It's surprising how graceful they are, even the adult males with full tails...
10. At first all had names, but when it started to be a lot of birds and started to sell, gradually stopped naming them. It's silly but it's a lot harder to sell something you named than something that was never named. Kind of like not naming the calf or piglet destined for butchering.

 

[MinxFox]

Wow so lots of varieties...I really want to eventually have a lot of pied peafowl that I could free-range, I think that would be cool. I hate how some people do try to run over something if it is on the road. My mom wondered if my peacock that ran off could be in a pen in someone's backyard. It would be pretty bad to have someone steal your peafowl, one day we had our poodle out in the front yard and a lady drove by in a car, stopped, got out of the car and tried to catch our dog because she thought our poodle was "lost" or something. We walked outside and called Snowball inside. It is a good thing our dog won't just walk up to any stranger.
That is cool how the ones you planned on selling would free-range. I can see how eventually you wouldn't want to name them all, I would probably end up getting pretty attached. I love how peafowl change when they free-range. When they are not caged they are so different.

 

[Kev]

A group of free range pieds would be great! They are the ones that look 'different' between penned and free range(greens being another big one). Inside pens, pieds sort of always look the same except for a male fanning vs not fanning... out on free range they're more active including flying or just flapping their wings. When they fly, they seem to throw off big flashes of white because their primaries are usually all or almost all white, which seems to add a lot of more white to the birds all of a sudden. More attention getting than an IB doing the same thing..

Thinking of 'regular' pied and silver pieds together? That would introduce a nice range of pied-ness into the flock for sure...

Your poodle story reminds me of the time I lived in the mountains. It was in more of a suburban area, houses close together but not housing tract type and also a popular summer and weekend vacation for people down the hill(right behind and to the side of house was a forest area), so there were lots of people passing or walking by on the streets. On nice days sometimes I opened the door of the chicken/geese/duck/turkey runs so they could go out if they wanted to. I could not believe the numbers of people running up to the door to let me know in a rather urgent way that the birds had "escaped" & how many of them were surprised at the concept of free ranging or just letting poultry out in the yard... a few even lectured about 'chickens flying away if you don't keep them cooped up!'.

Most of them thought it was pretty cool or just plain strange thing to do...

 

[Glenmar]

Mine is simple. I have a pair of IB. I got them in September, They have access to free range on my farm since November. They live in a large horse barn. They roost up very high in the rafters. Their food and water are kept in there. I have it set up so they can come out, but dogs, foxes and things like that can not get in. They come out during the day and forage around some, but still spend a large anount of time walking around and perching in the barn. It is very light and airy in there.
My recent free ranging story is with my male trying to get some of the free ranging hens from across the street to come over. We eventually had to catch him and drive him in the car back to his barn. He is very tame and will eat out of my hand. The female is a little more spooky. If she lays eggs, it hope to let her set them. I may have to lock them up un the barn for that.

 

[Kev]

Haha that is funny. Are they the same color- yours and theirs?

Yep I would recommend having the peahen locked up while she's setting and also at the very least the peachick's first month- better if more than 2 months. They're very vulnerable to hawks, crows when very young. Also if there isn't a lot of food, either provided or natural, the peahens can run the very young chicks ragged to exhaustion too.

 

[Glenmar]

They are the same color, but some of their hens have white on their chests, mine does not.
I am hoping to see them mating, so I will know when to start penning her up. I have a next box in the barn, but she may choose a horse stall.