I was looking at web sites related to buying Peafowl and came across your's. I thought I'ld share how I became aquainted with Peafowl. A couple of summers ago my wife and I were at the Denver Colorado Zoo and had seen some Peacocks roaming around the grounds like you do in most zoos. My wife commented on how cool it would be to have a peacock around our house. We had purchased a house on the outshirts of Cheyenne a year or two earlier with a barn and about 5 acres of land. I said I knew that there was a family out east of town that had some Peafowl for years. I hadn't thought much about it after that, until the following October. I was returning home from work one afternoon and as in pulled up infront of our house I noticed something in our driveway looking at the garage door. I couldn't belive it. I called my wife who I knew was already home and said "you won't believe what's in our driveway". Her first responce was "is it a moose. Like I said,!
we live in Wyoming so this would not have been that much of a stretch. When she finally came out and saw a young peacock standing there she just said "How cool". It only took me about 5 minutes to corner him and pick him up. I put him in our garage and set about trying to find out if anyone had lost him. On the second or third day I was checking him out a little closer and found that he had an open wound under his left wing. Probably from a fox, we have several living in the area. After a trip to a vet that specializes in birds and a few stiches he was fine. No one every came forward to claim him so I made up a stall in the barn for him. his name is Oberon. When the weather is nice I bring him out into the yard to roam, I'm the only one he will let pick him up. He would prefer to walk on his own but he doesn't fuss to much when I hold him. Our 3 dogs have learned to give him his space but I don't leave them alone with him. I also know there isn't a fox, bobcat or any other!
preditor that's going to step foot on our property. Happy Dog!
is a Ge
rman Shepard mix, Little Orphan Annie is a Great Dane, and Baby Girl is a 170 pound Saint Barnard mix. I pitty the critter that tangles with them. Oberon is only a couple of years old at my best guess. He hasn't gotton his full train yet. He's been with us about a year and a half now. One thing I have found odd is he doesn't call like any Peacock I've ever heard. When he does call he sounds more like a goose then a Peacock. It sounds like a honk. He has seamed to have formed a pretty good bond with me. I have even gotten him to perch on my should like a parrot more then a few times. He likes that better then being tucked under my arm when I bring him out to the yard. At this point I'm thinking about finding him a hen, but I'm not having much luck in these parts. Well just thought I'ld share my story with someone other then my co-workers. Thanks, I have found some interesting information on your site.

Name: Ron Oglesbee

Town: Cheyenne Wyoming USA

Pam Jack comes from Australa I've chatted many times with her her using email and we have swapped many things that each of us know from what we've done and more so the mistakes we've made while having peafowl as part of our lives.

This is an article wrote for “Australasian Poultry”

LIVING WTH PEAFOWL

Our adventure started in February 2005 when we bought our first two peacocks, the year old “Blues Brothers,” Jake and Elwood.

Luckily we had been advised to lock them up for months rather than weeks. I later met a girl who had kept a young pair in for a week and they both flew towards their opposite directional homes when let out. The body of the male was found but the hen was never seen again.

Lesson 1: Keep new peafowl in for as long as possible.

Some months later we let the boys out and they stayed. We then bought quite a few at an auction. Andrew sickened instantly and $300 later we euthanized him. Then they all came down with a cold and Bob couldn’t clear his sinuses. Hubby caught him to take him to the vet and he twisted in Al’s hands and broke his own leg. Another sad euthanasia.

Lesson 2: Probably don’t buy at an auction unless you know the history, as they may be weakened from travel. Catch with blanket or net, not by grabbing the leg. They are very strong, and will do anything to get out of your grasp.

After a few months we let them out. The Blues Brothers harassed them all. Dusk arrived and everybody was missing!!!

Lesson 3: Let them out when you have plenty of daylight left and watch every move!!!

A torchlight search found Napoleon lying exhausted in the grass 400m from home. We shepherded him back and in the meantime saw Elwood sneaking back. Napoleon was so tired he could only hop up to a low branch for the night so we hoped there weren’t any opportunistic foxes around. Jake arrived the next day, with his legband sticking into his leg. I lured him into the cage and managed to catch him and get it off. The neighbours 600m away rang to say they had one girl in their garden and the other girl wandered in a few days later. How lucky were we! When this lot had settled we purchased four more girls, two pied and two white.

Lesson 4: Try and keep them in a high cage where they have to fly up to perch or their flying muscles weaken.

The first breeding season caught us unaware. We knew Napoleon was ready to breed but all our girls were only a year old. Josephine was missing and after days we finally saw her and followed her. She was nesting in the woolshed in a sheep pen in a carton of gravel. A foxproof cubicle was built around her with poly tarps. She hatched out four chicks. Incubation time is 28 days but this varies. Three just disappeared and we now know that it was a very clever hawk who had been dining on our chooks too. We had been blaming a fox but it kept happening during the day while we were there. One day I caught her in the act of dismembering a freshly killed Pekin bantam.

Lesson 5: If you want to retain your progeny, lock them up.

Hubby then built a fabulous aviary right outside our back door. The birds were moving freely in and out of the open aviary and our idea was that we would lock some up before next breeding season and hope they nested in there. A lady on the internet was desperate for some females so we decided to sell two. I had a few locked up in the chook pen and a few in the aviary so she could choose. Moments before she arrived to pick them up I discovered a freshly laid egg in the chook pen!! I went up to the woolshed and discovered Josephine sitting on a pile! Our buyer took her two girls home and then I discovered Blanche sitting under the tank stand near our kitchen.

Lesson 6: It never rains but it pours!!

I picked up all Blanche’s eggs and shepherded her in to our fabulous aviary, along with the other pairs. All very well. She went on laying eggs and so did the other hens in the aviary, but no-one was going to sit on them were they??? After weeks we just gave up and let them out. Then there was action!

Lesson 7: They may lay eggs but seemingly they will only sit where they want to sit. I believe they need perceived privacy too.

I had collected some of the eggs and placed them under broody chooks, hoping at least to get a few. Josephine hatched out about seven chicks, quite a few of whom died. We had to be away at the time so a friend was looking after the property. Josephine flew out of the cubicle with them much more quickly than we expected and our friendly hawk took the lot. Meanwhile we discovered that Bianca, who was only one year old, had taken over the tank stand nest place and was sitting on six eggs. Al managed to build a wire and tarpaulin cubby around her, and then we found Blanche sitting under the woolshed, so long-suffering hubby built another cubicle. Then Josephine decided to lay another clutch in a sheep pen next to her previous place! Al built yet another shelter and Susan decided it was such a good one that she might share so she laid and they both sat together. Nobody seemed to know what to do about different incubation times etc so we just left them to it. We had found two eggs on a bed in the woolshed so we slipped them under too. Everything was going well there but 2006 had the worst plague of foxes we had ever seen. The fox bounty had been lifted. There were cubs everywhere, and because of the drought they were all starving. We would walk out into the backyard and find four foxes at the back door. One jumped up against the louvre window in the woolshed and broke it and scared Susan and Josephine off their clutch, so we never got to see what happened. We had had radios playing all night and solar lights, to no avail.

Blanche and Bianca hatched out nine chicks. We managed to get them all into the aviary and breathed a sigh of relief. Safe!!! Having to go away again, we left friend to manage. Luckily he is on the ball because he noticed a chick was missing. A patrol of the aviary found a hole dug by a fox, so he filled it with rocks and logs. When we returned, Al placed logs on the wire overlap. Safe again. Not quite. I found a brown snake doing its damnedest to get through the small gauge wire. One consolation was that every time a hawk or eagle flew over the mums would shepherd the babies under the roof but they were safe anyway!!

Lesson 8: Every predator is out to get your little babies.

Meanwhile Paris had gone missing and sadly we found her feathers down by the river, another fox victim. Some of the eggs under the chooks hatched out but we had no luck with the chooks mothering them properly. It is done though.

2007 carried big hopes. Our neighbour had brought in shooters and they had shot a dozen foxes, we had trapped two and the bounty was back on. Our biggest blow was to return from a trip and find our darling, in full tail, pied alpha male, Napoleon, missing with no trace. We were devastated. It is like losing a dog. So the Blues Bros were now the alphas. We reckoned apart from that blow, we would be pretty right this year, lots of prepared cubicles, the aviary ready, etc. We had bought another pied male sight unseen, who was supposed to be mature. Disappointingly he turned out to be only a juvenile. We had our own dramas with him as the Blues Bros chased him away, and he spent the night on the other side of the flooded river, but thank goodness he returned next day and they have sorted it out. Only Josephine nested in her old box. Bianca nested under the woolshed next to Blanche’s old possie: another cubicle built. Susan nested under a patio rose in the garden so we placed a wire cylinder over her with bird nets over the top. Blanche nested out in the middle of the paddock in long grass, so a cubicle went over her. We have 12 chicks altogether this year and they are all in the aviary with the Mums. With all our vigilance we still found two eggs on the bed in the woolshed …. whose????.... and recently we found 5 eggs in the vegie garden.

All this might put you off contemplating getting into peafowl, but I have to say, although it has been a steep learning curve for us, they more than make up for the trouble in every way. They are just so entertaining and fun to have around. They all have personalities and their antics “joy up your day.” The males are quite hilarious and their sociability is so interesting. When the hens are sitting they seem to have a “keeping her company” roster. They also regularly visit the aviary and communicate through the wire to the chicks. Noise… yes, in breeding season, but not as bad and as frequent as a rooster can be. Poo… yes, occasionally on your paths, but a convenient and satisfactory size, shape and consistency to brush up and flick on the garden. Food…. We feed them maize, chook layers, sunflower seeds and dry cat food. They also have free access to our vegie garden where they create lacy silver beet, but we have very few pests. We worm them with “Big L.”

If you would like to get involved I reckon I can save you from a lot of disasters and grief. I believe you have to have some acres: they travel about a fifty metre radius from their feeding base but ours will go up to 500m away. We have twenty acres. Away from a busy road is a good idea as you don’t want to be sued for your pets causing an accident. Of course you need a roofed pen, which can be used later to house the hens and chicks if you breed . The higher the better, with a high perch, to keep them in when you get them, but we initially kept them in a chook pen. Tall trees, especially European ones, to roost in at night mean they rarely get on your roof or cars. Feed them near your house so they like to hang around there. I would start with two males as we did and get the feel of keeping them first. The following year start to build up your breeders if you want to go that way. Just start with two girls, so you get the hang of their breeding habits as girls can breed the first year if the males are mature. It also means less stress as you will need to keep an eye on them when breeding season starts, and put temporary cubicles around them. One of ours is an outdoor plastic table with holes drilled around the circumference and poly tarp tied on half of it. The front half has wire which can be folded back during the day and tied up at night. If we go away for a weekend we close it up and leave food and water in there. We place logs around the base to hold the tarp and the wire down and stop foxes from burrowing. After the chicks have hatched we either catch them and the mother or shepherd them into the aviary. We feed turkey starters exclusively for a few weeks then add the adult food to the starters. Poultry starters do not have enough protein. A friend feeds mince steak but her hubby is a butcher! We place a ladder up to the high perch so the little ones find it a bit easier when they first go up. If you live in a cold place it is a good idea to have a night lamp they can huddle under in case they fall off the perch.

If you want to do the peafowl thing we would be happy to help and we think we could save you a lot of tears. Email us at pamajack@bigpond.com