Hi all,
This is my first time on the backyardchickens forum, so please bear with me if I don't follow any commonly accepted ways of phrasing things.
I live in the upper apartment of a 1730s building, the ground floor of which is occupied by the company I work for, and we are in the process of building a glamping site in the adjoining walled garden. The building sits in about an acre of grounds, the walled garden is about a further acre and then there's a driveway of a couple of hundred yards to the road. The motorway runs alongside the north east corner of the property (the driveway bends to run along its embankment) and the remaining sides are bounded by other houses. The walled garden is surrounded by a stone wall 10-14 feet high, and the rest of the property is surrounded by mature trees, rhododendrons and other shrubs. The motorway embankment is heavily wooded.
A year past in November a (fully mature) peahen turned up - to begin with we didn't feed her because we thought she'd go back to wherever she came from (nobody round here has peafowl, so God know where she originated) but, after a couple of weeks, she started to look really bedraggled so in the end we gave in and started feeding her. Last May she spent a few days doing a lot of honking and then disappeared for a day, and when she came back she had another two (young - the previous year's chicks, I'd guess) females with her. One of these disappeared during a gale about six weeks later (we suspect blown out of the tree and taken by a fox or something, because she was the nervy one and followed her sister everywhere, making it unlikely she'd have wandered off alone).
A couple of weeks ago, a male appeared on the scene - he looks quite young but is fully tailed so we're guessing perhaps a 3-year-old. On the office's CCTV you can see him stroll in from the direction of the motorway embankment. I put a flyer round our neighbours' houses the next morning (after he'd woken me at 5am and all I could think was that our neighbours were going to blame us for the noise), querying whether anyone knew where he'd come from and asking what they thought of him. I've had a lot of messages back from neighbours saying they love hearing the peafowl, and only one saying they find him too noisy and think we should try to rehome him, so on balance it looks like he should be okay to stay here if we can solve the issue below.
Aside from occasionally coming into the vestibule of the office and cr*pping all over the tiled floor, the peahens don't cause any trouble and we've never had any issues with them. A couple of days ago, though, the peacock began attacking his reflection in the staff's cars parked in front of the office (he's chosen the parking area as his display zone so to his mind, they'd essentially driven rival males into his display space) - a blue Jaguar, a black BMW and a grey Audi. All the cars were moved round to the side of the building and I went online and bought a load of car covers to cover the ones that usually park out front. Unfortunately, he now seems to have expanded his area and started wandering round to the side of the building to attack the cars there - a green Jaguar, my red Seat, my mum's silver Seat and a friend's blue Smart car.
In the short term, we could obviously buy a load more car covers and try to keep him off the cars that way, but once the glamping site is open we obviously can't go round covering all of our guests' cars, so we need to find a solution.
So... is it only during the breeding season that they attack cars, or is he likely to continue doing so the rest of the year?
If it's only for a few months, I'm wondering about building a pen and just shutting him in for that period (April to June? July?). At the back of the property there's an alcove between two extensions (about 5 metres by 5 metres in size) - the girls actually roost in there at the moment because we've got scaffolding up the back of the building and they switched from their roost tree to there back in the autumn, so we haven't had the heart to take the scaffolding down and remove their roost! If we were to fence that gap in, is a 5m x 5m space big enough for the three of them (I assume we'd be better to shut the girls in with him?)? How high would we need to make it? What height should perches be fixed at, and how far away from the walls would they need to be to let him get up on them with his tail)?
We currently feed them a mix of wild bird seed, cat or dog biscuits, mealy worms and (during the winter) suet balls for breakfast, then give them kitchen scraps (cabbage outer leaves, carrot peelings, meat trimmings, etc.) later in the day. If we shut them in, what do we need to add to their diet to ensure they get enough grit not to become egg bound? Actually, that's another point - would we need to provide some sort of nest box?
If it's not only during the breeding season that they attack cars, is there anything I can do to deter him? If not, I'll need to see if we can find him a new home.
Apologies for the lengthy post, but thanks in advance for any advice you can give.
This is my first time on the backyardchickens forum, so please bear with me if I don't follow any commonly accepted ways of phrasing things.
I live in the upper apartment of a 1730s building, the ground floor of which is occupied by the company I work for, and we are in the process of building a glamping site in the adjoining walled garden. The building sits in about an acre of grounds, the walled garden is about a further acre and then there's a driveway of a couple of hundred yards to the road. The motorway runs alongside the north east corner of the property (the driveway bends to run along its embankment) and the remaining sides are bounded by other houses. The walled garden is surrounded by a stone wall 10-14 feet high, and the rest of the property is surrounded by mature trees, rhododendrons and other shrubs. The motorway embankment is heavily wooded.
A year past in November a (fully mature) peahen turned up - to begin with we didn't feed her because we thought she'd go back to wherever she came from (nobody round here has peafowl, so God know where she originated) but, after a couple of weeks, she started to look really bedraggled so in the end we gave in and started feeding her. Last May she spent a few days doing a lot of honking and then disappeared for a day, and when she came back she had another two (young - the previous year's chicks, I'd guess) females with her. One of these disappeared during a gale about six weeks later (we suspect blown out of the tree and taken by a fox or something, because she was the nervy one and followed her sister everywhere, making it unlikely she'd have wandered off alone).
A couple of weeks ago, a male appeared on the scene - he looks quite young but is fully tailed so we're guessing perhaps a 3-year-old. On the office's CCTV you can see him stroll in from the direction of the motorway embankment. I put a flyer round our neighbours' houses the next morning (after he'd woken me at 5am and all I could think was that our neighbours were going to blame us for the noise), querying whether anyone knew where he'd come from and asking what they thought of him. I've had a lot of messages back from neighbours saying they love hearing the peafowl, and only one saying they find him too noisy and think we should try to rehome him, so on balance it looks like he should be okay to stay here if we can solve the issue below.
Aside from occasionally coming into the vestibule of the office and cr*pping all over the tiled floor, the peahens don't cause any trouble and we've never had any issues with them. A couple of days ago, though, the peacock began attacking his reflection in the staff's cars parked in front of the office (he's chosen the parking area as his display zone so to his mind, they'd essentially driven rival males into his display space) - a blue Jaguar, a black BMW and a grey Audi. All the cars were moved round to the side of the building and I went online and bought a load of car covers to cover the ones that usually park out front. Unfortunately, he now seems to have expanded his area and started wandering round to the side of the building to attack the cars there - a green Jaguar, my red Seat, my mum's silver Seat and a friend's blue Smart car.
In the short term, we could obviously buy a load more car covers and try to keep him off the cars that way, but once the glamping site is open we obviously can't go round covering all of our guests' cars, so we need to find a solution.
So... is it only during the breeding season that they attack cars, or is he likely to continue doing so the rest of the year?
If it's only for a few months, I'm wondering about building a pen and just shutting him in for that period (April to June? July?). At the back of the property there's an alcove between two extensions (about 5 metres by 5 metres in size) - the girls actually roost in there at the moment because we've got scaffolding up the back of the building and they switched from their roost tree to there back in the autumn, so we haven't had the heart to take the scaffolding down and remove their roost! If we were to fence that gap in, is a 5m x 5m space big enough for the three of them (I assume we'd be better to shut the girls in with him?)? How high would we need to make it? What height should perches be fixed at, and how far away from the walls would they need to be to let him get up on them with his tail)?
We currently feed them a mix of wild bird seed, cat or dog biscuits, mealy worms and (during the winter) suet balls for breakfast, then give them kitchen scraps (cabbage outer leaves, carrot peelings, meat trimmings, etc.) later in the day. If we shut them in, what do we need to add to their diet to ensure they get enough grit not to become egg bound? Actually, that's another point - would we need to provide some sort of nest box?
If it's not only during the breeding season that they attack cars, is there anything I can do to deter him? If not, I'll need to see if we can find him a new home.
Apologies for the lengthy post, but thanks in advance for any advice you can give.
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