20 May 2010 
Well it's one of the latest springs I've known. My hens only really kicked into lay at the weekend. I had a white hen lay 3 eggs a month ago but sods law was they weren't fertile. Odd really as her mate is always displaying. This is now a worrying time waiting till the other hen with her lays and we can see if any of her eggs are fertile.
BBC Radio Berkshire with Phil Kennedy from 4:00 pm till 7:00 pm week days (good plug there for his show) phoned me at 5:30 today asking what the bird was that had turned up in a listeners garden earlier in the morning. He ended up interviewing me on his show and it turned out to be a Black Shouldered Peahen. Has most times when it is black shouldered hen many people think it's a white peafowl. She had phoned all the usual people and non of them offered any help. Has I told them unless the bird is injured no one would be willing to remove it from her garden. I even through a small stone onto the cabin with four mature cocks in it! This is always good for a full corus from the boys and I'm told it does sound good on the radio, which is a lot better than can be said for me! I've no dought this will not be the last time I'm asked to fill a bit of air time and talk about peafowl.

8 May 20010
Well I'm going to start with the one thing that we know how to talk about in the Uk and that's the weather! It's been dry now for almost 2 months. But it's been very cold. Non of the crops on the farm have been growing like they should at this time of year. The frosts we have been getting at dawn haven't helped things. I think this is also upsetting the peafowl. The peahens just don't seem to be laying a full clutch of eggs. A number of the hens just lay 1 or 2 eggs then stop. I've never known it like this before, but it's still early season so time for them to settle in.
I got a new Java green peacock at the end of March. He is 5 years old and should of had a full tail on arriving at the farm! but things never go to plan. If anyone as ever had a mature peacock from me then you'll know that I box my birds in a small cardboard box that I can make to suit the size of the bird that is going to be transported in it. I've shipped birds for many years all over the country also into Ireland and touch wood! with no problems. I don't believe in giving the bird much room to move while in transit. If they have room to walk around they just stress and can hurt themselves. When it comes to shipping full tailed birds I make the box about 22 inches long,

20 March 2010
Well I did set out with the idea of keeping an up to date record of just what I'm doing with my birds over the year but as you'll see from looking at the date I last entered anything on the page that just isn't happening at the moment. So it may be better that I just start from where I'm at right now and not start to fill in what I've been doing for the last 10 months! I know I couldn't Believe it had been that long since I'd been on this page and put anything down.
I'm now starting to move birds around and looking at what hens I had with what cocks last year and also looking at what cock lost their tails first last year and which were the last to get their tails this year. I think I've said before but I'm trying to breed birds that hold their tails for longer in the summer. The way to do this is to only breed from cocks that keep their tails. I was going to say keep their tails longer but this isn't true really as most birds get their tails at the start of the year and keep them for around 6 months then they shed them. So what I try to do is use cock birds that get their tails in Feb. or later. I have one that for the last two years as only got his tail in March so I'm using some hens that came of my next best male this year to put with him. I'll let you know in 3 years if his sons are holding their tails s longer. I'm worming my breeding birds now. This will be the last time until the hens have stopped laying. Fertilely can be effected if birds are wormed while they are laying. I'll still worm my young birds every 3 months. Last year I wormed my peachick's at 3 weeks with a low dose for 3 days then again at 4 weeks. I think they seemed to do well from it. If your birds are from range it's still a good idea to worm them. You can get tables from your vet or online and push them into grapes and feed them to your birds as treats. Or you can worm them in water. I do this by keeping a bucket with fresh water that they can drink from at any time. Then when it's frosty or dry I put wormer in the bucket with the water as I know this is the only place they can get water from.
I hope to be able to put a new cabin in late spring, early summer to rear my young birds in. I normally do this in the same cabin as my breeding birds but by the end of the breeding season I'm short on room. If I remember I'll try to take some pictures of us putting the cabin up and load them onto this page. Unsure just now how I'm going to build it but it will be replacing one that was taken down a couple of years ago that we used to store seed potatoes in. There is grass down one side so I hope so put some pens down that side at some point. They should be seen from the house and run inline with my pens that are on the side of the first cabin.

19/06/2009
What a busy month June as been so far. Moved my first lot from chicks from the hatcher to brooding box on 12 June. There was 10 chicks that hatched from Ted Henshore. I gave Ted a 2 year old white cock just before his hens started laying. He as an indian blue cock and a black shouldered cock but me as a white hen and he asked if I had a white cock he could use to breed from this year as he wanted to put his black shouldered, indian blue and whites hens all in one pen with a white cock just to see what he'd get. Well I can now say he got a mix! there was indian blue, black shoulder and what I would say are pied indian blue being as they have so much white marking showing as day old chicks. I'd around 30 chicks from my first set of eggs so was more than happy with that. Then today I moved my second lot from the hatcher to a brooder box. 13 of these were Harry's birds so I'd to nip them round to his before I went in for tea. He had 4 white chicks at's the same number as he hatched all last year. I had 30 birds to move from the hatcher but only moved 29 as one just wasn't standing up. I had a problem with splade legs in this hatching. Not sure why as the 3 of the 4 birds I had to tape up where from pen 1 now on the first hatch not a single chick from that pen had any problems. Just to let you know how I try to treat the problem of splade leg in chicks I first get some electric insalion tape and cut a length about 13 cm (5 inches) long then I lay it on table with sticky side up. Take chick in hand and told it upside down so it's looking at your feet. Then hold legs about 6cm apart and put them on the tape with legs either side of the middle. now fold over the end of tape around each leg and stick it to the tape between the chicks legs. You want the 2 ends not quite touching this makes the tape bend easy in between the checks legs as its only 1 thick. Now I leave this on for a week but you must keep an eye on the birds checking the tape every day. I also tape toes at the same time if they need it. Chicks will soon be walking around with tape on legs. Remember they don't know any other way so just get on with making the best of what they have.

I got on my local TV news this week and the radio! Some one had woken up to find a peacock in her back garden. ( I bet she didn't get dressed as quick as me last month when I woke up at 5:30 and there was 70+ one year olds coming down the yard!! but that's another story for another time). Well anyway this lady then phoned BBC Radio Lancashire's breakfast show and told Tony Livsey the presenter about the bird. Turned out to be a 2 year old Indian Blue peacock that had been roaming around the area for some weeks now. It must of been a slack day for news on Wednesday because about 10:30 BBC northwest tonight news phoned me and asked if they could come over and interview me about this stray bird and why it was in the ladies garden. What can I say I thought they see me on TV and I'll be judging Britain got talent next year!! So I said your more than welcome to come to the farm. It was agreed they'd be here around 3:00 that afternoon. Has with most things in life 3:00 came and pasted with no sign of anything. Then about 5:00 a man in a blue van rolled up from Liverpool. They were running late at Manchester so had sent him to film me and ask some questions. The first thing I have to say here is what does our licence fee get spend on? Because it's not on outside broadcasting cameras the one that filmed me was 15 year old. I think they use hamsters to drive them. I did ask if it could shoot in colour and was informed it would be fine so long as it didn't start to rain again then he'd have to put rubber gloves on to touch the buttons. I was placed in front of a pen with all my yearling birds in it. Lets just say at this time of year they aren't my greatest fans. I'm always going in with them and catching birds to box up to go to their new homes. Well they soon get wise to this and as soon as they see or hear me coming into their cabin they all file through the hatch into the outside pen. The same works the other way, I walk around the pen and they all get back into the cabin sharpish. So while the guy sets up the tripod for the camera the birds all get inside out of sight. We did the interview and I answered all his questions. He then said he'd like to take some pictures of the birds up close to the pen, so I said I'll go and heard the birds back into the pen and I'll get him a full tailed male and bring it out to show it him close up.He laughed and said yes ok! You should of seen his face when I walked out of the cabin with a 4 year old indian blue peacock in my arms. He said he thought I was only joking then started filming the birds and asking me about it. It was 5:30 when the man with the camera left the farm to drive back to Liverpool a good hour away if traffic was good and that's not going to be at that time of day. Well they started the local news at 6:30 and by 7:00 when they did the story I said my 5 second bit and was shown holding the peacock. Then I was assigned to iplayer never to be seen again, well not on Britain's got talent anyway. But I made it to TV and I know that the only reason I got on was because I keep peafowl so it's them that where the stars and I'm just glad that I get to walk behind holding their tail!! But wait my moment of fame wasn't over yet on Thursday morning Radio Lancashire phoned to ask if I would do a quick slot on the breakfast show with Tony Livesy. I was on the show last year about names that people give their peacocks. So this was a return visit for me, but this time it was on the phone and not their van at the farm at 7:00 in the morning.

04/06/2009
I can't believe it's been 3 months since I was last here.

Well the day as come that I've got round to putting prices of birds on the web site. I was always told never to show people the prices you charge, but to tell the truth it's just to nice a day to be sat in front of this screen replying to emails with a peafowl price list. As I type this I'm sat looking out the window watching a neighbour plough a field before he gets it ready for to plant leeks. I'm almost wishing I was out there doing it for him! and not trying to remember if plough ends in gh?

Well I had 3 Black Shoulder pea chicks hatch yesterday. The thing is they weren't mine but some eggs I had in the incubator from Harry. He gave me 53 eggs and 50 were infertile. When I told him I was upset because I thought it must be my incubator. But when he said he didn't think any of them would of been fertile so he so well happy with three I was very relieved but some what puzzled. He said he had been cached out by early laying hens and worming to late in the spring. The 3 eggs that hatched were off a cock and hen he had not wormed.

My birds have been very late to start laying this year so I've only had eggs set for 2 weeks now. But fertility does to be very good so far. My white birds are very slow to start laying and even now I've not set any eggs from them. I did notice this morning that 4 hens had started to left their wings drop so I should get some eggs in the next couple of days, touch wood!

I was came to ground with a bump last month and it just makes you see why never to keep peafowl with the aim of making any money from them never mind paying their way. Well here are all the details. A company called Birds & Animals, UK contacted me back in March, 05, 2009 to see if I had two white Peacocks with full tails. At the time I was not able to help them as it was coming to the start of the breeding season and knowing my luck if I'd sold any then something would of happened to my breeding cocks and it would of left me without any full tailed birds. Birds & Animals, UK contacted me again on April, 21, 2009 saying they really needed the birds and would pay £200 each for the birds. I again told them I couldn't help them but I'd ask around to see if anyone else I knew may have any they would be willing to sell. How ever no one could find me anything so I left it at that. Again Birds & Animals, UK contacted me on 05/05/2009 saying and I quote from email "we are desperate to find two male peacocks at about 3 years old" I again said I'd ask around as people would now know if they had any birds that they would not need to breed from this year and I'll need to know just what price you are offering for them. They said they really need them and would pay £300 for each bird. So I asked around again and this time I managed to find 2 birds with full tails and both at the same place. They were both in pens also, so it would be easy to catch the birds for shipping. I contacted Birds & Animals, UK and sent them pictures of the 2 white peacocks by email. They replied saying that they are just what they wanted. This was on a Wednesday and they said They'd contact me on Friday to confirm and arrange payment for the birds. Birds & Animals, UK did contact me by phone on Friday morning they said they wanted the birds and would pick them up on Monday and how did I want to be paid? Now this is were I slipped up! I'd been on their web site and they claimed to have offices in New York, LA and London. I thought they are a big company so they aren't going to do a runner now after agreeing they wanted the birds.

Before I go on here I'm going to say that people who have taken birds from me in the past know I take payment for them before you come to pick them up. This is for a number of reasons one is so we don't have to mess about with card details and it gives cheque's time to clear. Two is some people say they are coming to pick up birds and give a time and date so I catch up the birds and wait round the yard when I could be doing other things only for them never to show and never contact me again. They just don't consider that the birds have to be caught and boxed up then left in a box at our farm for hours until I have to let them go again knowing they'll have to do it all again one day for someone who does care enough about animals to have them. I have found that if you take payment for the birds in advance then when people say they are coming they come and if they can't they let you know.

Now back to Birds & Animals, UK As I said above they phoned on Friday morning saying they wanted the birds and would pick them up on the coming Monday when they asked how I wanted paying I said bring a cheque with you when you pick the birds up. They asked who to make the cheque out to and I said Brow Farm. They again confirmed they would be coming on Monday around lunch time by the time they had driven up from London. We then said our good byes till Monday.

Now I had to get the birds to me ready for when Birds & Animals, UK to collect in 3 days time on Monday. So as soon as I put down the phone with Birds & Animals, UK I phoned the owner of the 2 white peacocks and told them I had sold both of the birds and would set of now to get them back to my yard before the weekend. So I took my catching net, transport boxes and cheque book and before setting of to get the peacocks I had Sarah make out an invoice for Birds & Animals, UK ready for me to confirm before emailing it over to them. Then I was away and by 12:30 I was back home with 2 beautiful white Peacocks for Birds & Animals, UK and a large sum of money lighter in my bank account!

It was about 1:30 that afternoon while I was still walking round the yard with a big smile on my face from thinking how I'd managed to find and supply 2 white peacocks that were soon to become extras in the British film industry. When I got a phone call from Birds & Animals, UK saying the film makers had cut the sean with the white peacocks in it so they didn't want them anymore! I told them I'd already got the birds delivered into my yard and they'd agreed to pay for them earlier that day. They said they understand that but they didn't need them so would not be picking them up on Monday as they earlier agreed to do. I said it's not as easy as that as we had both agreed they wanted the birds. They then said they'd see what they could do and contact me on Monday. Well as you can imagine I was a little lost for words at the time and didn't thing now was the time to say what words did come into my head the longer I talked to them on the phone. Well as may be no surprise Birds & Animals, UK did not contact me on Monday. I phoned them on Tuesday, they said they understand how I feel and they also stand to loose a lot of money if the film studio didn't take the birds. But as I told them they had agreed to buy the birds and an agreement by word of month is still an agreement. They then said they'd get back to me on the matter and if we can sort it all out. Well again they never contacted me, so I left it a week then sent them a letter stating all date of email made to and from them and the same with telephone conversions between us and also printed the invoice and posted that with the letter. Birds & Animals, UK then replied to the letter saying:

Dear Sir or Madam

we white to you in regards of the letter we received about the purchase of peacocks. We did speak through email and on the telephone as we were looking into purchasing some white peacocks, but at no point was there any promise that we would purchase them from you. We did say it was likely but never actually confirmed.
We did agree that if we were happy with the birds and still to proceed in buying them that we would pay £600.00. But as stated in your letter we called on the 08/05/2009 at 1:30pm and advised you that we didn't require the birds from you. I am sorry that you had already purchased the birds but you should have waited for confirmation from us.
As there were no promises from us that we would actually be purchasing the birds we would appreciate no further contact.

Thank you

Hayley Dida
Birds & Animals, UK
leavden Studios
Leacesden
Herts
WD25 7LT,
Phone: 01923685146 - Mobile:07977988188 - Fax: 01923685178 - www.BirdsandAnimals.com - Birdsandanimalsuk@hotmail.com - VAT # 766 4225 16

Well all I can say is you live and learn, and with companies out there with that attitude to building a good relationship over the years to come then I just don't need that kind of business. I'll never be stung like that again and I've learned to have a set of rules and if people do not want to go by those rules then you should not deal with them. So now some people may think I'm being very hard by taking payment before any birds are picked up or delivered by us. But I can assure you that your being treated in just the same way as Sir Alan Sugar would be.

Next on my list of things to as a direct result of this is to have a set of Terms & Conditions drawn up just for live animals, and I'll be putting that any animal we have to get in from outside Brow Farm is a bespoke order and so must be paid for even if not taken away from the farm by the buyer. All companies should have Terms& Conditions by law. This is a good thing so that way both you and any customers know where they stand from the day they agree to buy. Also get any agreement to buy confirmed in writing or on email asap for the goods of the animals as well as your pocket.

The only good thing I can say here is that these people have nothing to do with peafowl so none of you should ever have to deal with them. It would of been nice to say that I've sold birds that are now staring in films. But now for the price of £1.65 a day for the next year I have something even better and that's 2 beautiful white peacocks to greet me every morning when I look out of my window. So you could say that there was a silver white lining to this whole story.

Right I've got to go now and move some eggs over to the hatcher then set some eggs down and candle some eggs I set 2 weeks ago. You never know I may be moving one of those new white cocks around tomorrow if my breeding bird haven't been doing his job!

07/03/2009
Sorry for not adding to the page in so long. I just seem to be so busy around the yard that by the time I get to sit down in front of this screen with some time to myself the last thing I feel like doing is trying to remember how to spell and how to put down what's in my head so others know just what I'm on about! Well it's a dull cool day here so I've retreated into the office lit the stove and I'm now slow roasting myself with some fire wood from an old sycamore tree that had seen better days in front of the house.

I say this all the time but I feel I still have to say it again "I can't believe this time of year is upon us again. It's the end of the shooting season and as anyone who knows me knows I enjoys a walk out with the dogs and the gun, but that's another subject for another time. The nights are starting to get lighter so we now have time to walk through the peafowl pens before they go to roost for the night. Even if I do say so the yearlings do look well at the moment and they don't seem to jumpy when we are in with the birds. Jamie was cleaning them out last week and he said they just weren't bothered about him taking down all the perches and removing feed bins and drinkers. I was at my friend Harry the other day and I must say his young birds do always seem more laid back than ours.
Harry has had one heck of a problem with rats for the last year but is now on top of them. It really was frightening to see how much poison they were taking in a week and it just didn't seem to ease for months. That's one of the problems with breeding birds or any live stock your feeding all the time so if pests get a foot hold it's so hard to get them just to take your bait with so much other food easily available to them. We store wheat and many other seeds at the farm so have to keep a good program of trap and poison going all year round. We were using Tomcat up to the end of last summer but started to notice that we just weren't removing mice anymore. Our neighbour said the same thing and he was having a really problem with mice in the walls of one of his grain stores. After much research we purchased . This is a very aggressive poison and great care should be taken when using it. I would not recommend using it until other poisons were no longer having an effect on your target rodent.
A quick note before anyone emails to ask why we don't have cats around the farm. Well I'm no fan of cats they take just as many birds as they do mice. I'd never feed my dogs then let them out for the night to go where they like so why people think it's fine to do that with a cat, then come to our farm asking if I'd seen it, does get my back up a little! Well lets get back to what your here too read about "the peafowl" You should now be starting to think about what hens are going to be penned with what cocks. If like me you do pen up your birds in the breeding season. My cocks are now well on their way to getting full tails so I'll be worming them at the end of this month. I'm still unsure just which wormer I'll be using this time. I do like to try to mix it up a little. I used panacure last autumn so will try for something else this spring. I've not had a bad winter with regard to loosing older birds. Only one old hen died, she was in her teens and hadn't laid for the last couple of seasons. I swapped her with Harry many years ago for new blood in a line of birds I was breeding some new pied blues off. I may be short of a Indian Blue cock this season due to me promising one of my 2 year olds that turned up lame the day before they came to contact him. They were well chuffed at having to take home a 3 year old, but I lost a bird that I would of liked to of breed of this year. He was of a cock that really holds his tail late in the summer which is a good thing if you have the birds for show and they still have full tails when your out in the garden.

I did breed some Reeves Pheasants this year, but I'm unsure just yet what I'm going to do with them. Caroline calls them "The bandits birds" due to the black band over the eyes. One thing I have noticed is that if you keep them in with the peafowl you don't get any cobwebs building up as Reeves always seem to be flying up the wire and perching on any ledge they can find.

I've just been on the phone to Shaun while typing this and he's all set to deliver the birds again this year. So we'll need to get about 4 or 5 deliveries to make it worth his while driving from one end of the country to the other.

20/07/08
Hello all
It's that time of year again. Yes breeding season is well under way and by the end of July it's fast coming to a close. Seems like I wait all year for what I must say is one of the main reasons I like to keep Peafowl. But it's all over so fast. Only seems 5 minutes ago I was worming the old birds in early April and now I find myself looking to see if I have enough in for when I worm again in October. I've had 9 months to think about what new things I'm going to try this year with the egg setter and the hatcher. Quick note here for you I say egg setter because I put my eggs in here for the first 3 weeks or so then I move them to the hatcher where the chicks will pip hatch out and dry off. I use the word incubator if I was going use one machine do all this in. I use the setter and hatchery system because I set eggs once a week so I can have 4 sittings of eggs in the setter at any one time all at different stages. If I was to hatch my eggs in the same machine then I have to clean the machine every week. You can just clean the hatching tray but as anyone who does this knows the rest of the machine fills up with the down from the new dried chicks. Also it's not so easy to run the humidity up in the 90s for hatching and in the 50s for the still developing eggs all in the same machine. This year I've used trays in the hatcher so the eggs will be sat with the point facing down. I just wanted to see if it helped with hatch rates. i would normally lay the eggs on their side in the hatcher. It's just me messing really but I get something in my head and I have to try it myself before I'll either bin it or adopt it. Well has for this one it's not lowered the hatching rate so I'll probably keep on doing it. Just remember if you try it not to use solid egg trays or you'll loose air flow and so get cooler areas of the hatcher. Right I'm off to wing tag then move some chicks from the hatcher to the brooder box.

Thanks for looking in

Martin Caunce