I don't know whether they are still there or not, but a neighborhood in nearby Sugar Land had a thriving flock of feral peacocks. The residents were not amused.
Made a Awesome Trade!!!!!!
lol PP I have read about the wild Peacock both in Tx and Fl. No one like them especially during breeding season and DH wonders why I don't want any
=D! My peacocks are unusually quiet. The male only really calls in the springs and not nearly as frequently as descriptions of other males. He has his female (they have two babies that he seems to love to feed) and he is happy with his lot in life. The female only really makes noises when she is unhappy about something or sees coyotes in the distance. My new neighbor was shocked to learn that I have peacocks. I can see, though, how a group of feral peacock might be annoying neighbors indeed! I would even take THEM over the feral hogs!!!!!!
I would take all of them over feral hogs, but, alas it's the hogs that we actually have around here.
Porkpal, and Terri Emory. Can't you just shoot and butcher the feral hogs??? I don't know much about them except when I lived in Whitehouse, Florida we used to have hunting parties for the feral hogs on the Fl, Georgia border. I was told the locals butchered and ate them. Is that not so???...Haystack
Oh My heavens, Yes Shoot the suckers and soak them in vinegar to get out the wild taste and Bar-b-cue, roast,boil, or slow cook..........Yeah! Just a thought from an old Georgia girl brought up on Wild game!!
Yes it's legal to shoot them, trap them, poison them, but there are SO many of them and they are really smart so eradication is so far not possible. One of our dogs - or several of them probably - killed a hog in our south paddock and they haven't come back there, but they are often in the other pastures at night.
It is also illegal to transport feral hogs so you can't trap them and sell them unbutchered. There are, however, professionals that will trap them off your land. It is just an endless task.
This message was edited Nov 17, 2010 8:00 AM
Our neighbor came over Thanksgiving night last year and shot and hauled away quite a few. I am talking about thirty or forty hogs in a group, counting all the babies. That group moved on and another has just recently taken it's place. We are about a mile from the Sabine river and they live down in the bottoms, moving up and down the river for miles, and come up to our pastures at night to root for grubs, acorns and pecans, etc. They completely destroyed my garden three years ago (all in one night) and I had to move the entire garden as they left plenty of calling cards all over the place. This new group is doing its best to destroy our hay pasture and my neighbor's hay pasture. If you shoot and eliminate one group, another moves in within a couple of years.
DH has installed turbowire electric fencing around the house and about two acres of yard and we just finished installing turbowire fencing to a six strand barbed wire fence to our east pasture so that we can start building a goat herd. The barbed wire was not keeping the hogs out, but the addition of five strands of electric turbowire has now established it's authority! A number of squeels and screeches have been coming from that area at night. We figure we need good fencing for the goats anyway. Goats in--hogs out!
And so I will make sure to secure any area I might want to have ducks and geese. They would definitely go after any eggs or chicks.
As for the Emus, I would probably feed them if I knew what they ate. I would need to know more about them though. They are not a problem and aren't dangerous like the hogs. At this point they are just an unusual sight one would not expect to see in Texas.
And they lay some honkin' BIG eggs. LOL
Wow Terri and Porkpal: Thanks for the education. I lived in Texas for seven years but there is still so much I don't know...I knew the feral pigs ran in herds but I never knew there were so many of them. They are indeed very smart, I remember that we used to have to get up very early to find them bedded down and we had to use flashlights to find them. If they were already up and moving you could hardly get close enough for a shot. We used double 00 so the chances of them getting away if you shot them was almost impossible. This is one of the things I really enjoy about this forum, that is the information and education you can get here...Thanks for sharing...Hay
Haystack, the size of the "herds" depends on the area here in Texas. Rains county seems to have a lot of hogs. I read in the news paper that Sulphur Springs (in Hopkins Co. I believe) is having a problem with the hogs actually coming into town. So you wake up and walk out to get the newspaper and greet a feral hog rooting in your front yard! Yikes!
Sorry to hyjack the ducky threat.....I still want ducks and think those exotic duck you have, DonnaB, are awfully cute!
I also agree, those ducks are the cutest I have ever seen...Hay
we got hogs 1 yr coming to our pond when the rivers were flooded. They were eating the corn we put out for the deer. We shot one when they came before dark one day. Tasty little sucker. They quit coming after that yay!!! They sure tear the ground up