Hello all!
I know we are getting closer to spring now. My male peacock is starting to grow his feathers and display for the hen. He is about 9-10 now and we will see about 3 more feet of feathers before he is done for the spring.
Geo
Its begun! The peacock is displaying.
He is stupendous! wow!
How exciting! He's gorgeous. How many peafowl do you have?
I'm interested in getting some & would love to hear about your
experiences.
Hey Tammy
I just keep a pair. I have had the same pair for about 7 years now. I either sell the eggs or if I can't find the nest I get the chicks when they are about 3-4 months old. The hen lays 2 clutches each year, a spring one and another in the late summer. The older the hen the more eggs you get. She lays between 5-7. I have gotten 100% hatching so far, when incubating or using a hen to hatch. Thats how I found them, I bought the eggs from them on eggbid. I saw the pair(they were local) and knew they where from good blood and went back and bought them. When I kept them caged, she never went broody. Now we live on a lot of acreage and it has no neighbors, so they get to free range and she broods her own eggs. The india blue(what I have) are very hardy. They stay out all winter and do wonderful. I feed them corn and scratch, with a shot of extra protein in the winter(dry cat/dog food) once a week. In the summer they eat almost nothing I feed them, except treats. There are 2 breeds, the India blue and Java greens. I want to add another hen in the spring, but in my climate they have to have india blue blood to make it without heated shelter. The Java greens are gorgeous and hope to find a hen with some of there blood in them. Check out www.eggbid,com to see the different variations of peafowl and for pricing. I would not order birds off there, unless they where local pick up, but its fun to look. They can be loud, but I think they sound like some exotic jungle bird. I love the sound. Their range can be up to a mile, but mine stay close to home. They can also fly well, mine roost in trees 40-50 feet up. One other thing they do is I get to collect and sell the feathers for about a buck each on ebay. My male gives me about 60 on each molt and I get 2 molts a year. Do some google searches and check them out, thats how I made up my mind to get them.
Geo
This was the pair before the feathers started growing in.
I guess you don't have problems with predators then? I have chickens
and have to keep them in the barn at night. The guinea hens did fairly
well roosting outside but they also were subject to loss by the local
wildlife.
They sure are gorgeous! Thanks for all the info.
Tam
Hey Tammy
The birds are pretty big, so predators have a hard time dealing with them. My outside dogs also protect them, but then the hen is a bit mean and attacks the dogs sometimes.
Geo
I lose guineas to owls when they are small, but it seems to stop once they get mature.
Do you lock them up at night?
Hey kathy
They will not have it. I tried caging them and they just sat there. She laid maybe 2 eggs all summer, never went broody and his feathers always looked ratty. I decided to let them go(my little girl was the one who made this happen. She went in to look at them and forgot to close cage) We had only 7.5 acres then, but they stayed close and never even looked at that cage again. She laid her eggs and brooded them. When I would find her nest, which is not an easy thing, I would rob it and either sell the eggs or hatch them myself with a hen or bator and sell at about 3-4 months. When I had my heart surgery and needed to move, I had a large chicken coop and it took about 2 months of feeding in there to get them in there and one day before the move I rushed the door and caught them. I then had a friend here in Morehead who had a farm and he kept them and my pygmy goats until I recovered and moved. When we moved her we accidentally broke the hens leg and had to doctor her for about 2 months and thank god she recovered. We now have 100 wooded acres, so they are loose and roost in trees about 50 feet in the air. They love it here. I even saw her chasing a squirrel through the yard(I guess she got a hankering for squirrel meat). Maybe I just have good luck, but I find them easy to raise and a pleasure to get to see something that beautiful here in Ky. They are not cheap(by my standards), but they have paid for themselves many times over with the sale of eggs, babies and feathers.
Geo
We had peafowl when I was a child. Dad would get so mad at them. They'd get in the top rafters of the machine shed and leave calling cards on his tractor seats. Then they'd start screaming when he'd drive around with the tractors and he'd think someone was screaming for "help" and he'd have to cut the tractor off and listen. Mom would run them out of the garden. They'd start down the pea rows picking off the blooms and they'd nip the head out of the young broccoli.
It wasn't uncommon for them to roost at the tops of our 70 ft. silos. We rarely sold any because no one seemed to want them at the time. The flock got up to around 30-40 birds at one time and then gradually seemed to dwindle. I don't know if foxes and coyotes gradually picked them off or what. It was sorta nice to always have a supply of peacock feathers though.
Janet
Wow, I could never have them here without keeping them locked up at night time. They sure are pretty though
My parents had some..think we had 15 at one time...they were the India Blue's...they free ranged too and it was always fun to go find the nests, when a hen went missing. We would cover the hen (and the nest) with a cage and go and feed and water her until she hatched the chicks, then they would all go into a Big pen until the chicks were sizeable....I think Mom sold some of them..always wanted a white pea hen, never managed to get one...