A year or two after moving here, Keith bought a peacock at an animal sale. He thought it was the coolest thing ever! Right up until it disappeared two weeks later. We then found out that peacocks don’t stick around if there isn’t also a peaHEN nearby.
Peacock
So several years later we bought four day-old peachicks to raise ourselves. Two died after several weeks, but thankfully we ended up with one boy and one girl. Keith fixed one of our pens with chicken wire walls and a ceiling so they couldn’t fly away and nothing else could fly in. That worked for a while, but after a year or so they found a way out and we weren’t able to get them back in. It turned out, though, that they knew where the food was and have stuck around. A year later, though, that original hen was killed along with the eggs she had been setting on. Most likely it was a coyote. We were able to find a new hen to buy, though, and last year she hatched out 2 new baby hens. And this year she hatched two more eggs – one boy, one girl. In a few years we hope to be able to start selling some now and then. Especially as all these hens mature! They are very beautiful and neat to have around, though the peacock seems to think it’s necessary to crow for 30 minutes or so at 3 a.m. in the spring and early summer. We don’t like him much then. And if we aren’t able to sell the extras, we’ve been told they are a delicacy in India. We might have to find out if they deserve that reputation…
Peahen
Pecocks roosting in the barn
So far they don’t cost us much in feed, except in winter. They spend most of their day roaming the area looking for bugs. They sometimes will eat the chicken feed or the corn we put out for our two geese that serve no real purpose. But in the winter we do put out corn for the geese and peafowl. Actually the peafowl serve no real purpose, either, other than entertainment. In the spring the peacock spends half of his time strutting around trying to impress females. The farmers and truck drivers that were here to empty the farmer’s grain bins had a great time watching and taking pictures! Then by summer, the poor boy starts losing his pretty feathers. Keith decided that we should sell them at the farmer’s market where I sell soap. Every day he’d pick up all the feathers he could find. I thought he was nuts, but brought them anyway. Every single feather sold and I had to admit I was wrong. He just grinned at me. In late winter the pretty feathers come back in just in time for mating season