Well, our peacock story has a few ups and downs.
It all started with me wanting to get peacocks for my wife. So in the spring we went out and got a pair of India Blue Peacocks. The female was 1 year old and the male was 2 years old. They both needed another year of growth to be old enough to breed. But the thing we were concerned about was that they were new to this farm, and if we were to let them roam around the farm, they might wander off or get scared off, and not be able to come home. So we were careful with them, built a new cage and housed them in it.
Problem was we didn’t do good enough to keep the raccoons out. One night a raccoon dug under and got it and killed the hen. A few nights later we came home late from fishing and found the raccoon in the cage and the male was dead. Difference was that this time the raccoon didn’t leave the pen on her own. We lost both of the first peacocks we got to raccoons. So I started looking round for peacocks and one day I came across an ad for some babies. They were billed as day old peachicks, but I think they were a week or two old. This lady had gotten into raising peachicks thinking she was going to get rich or something and when it didn’t work, she wanted out. So I picked up all four chicks plus an Easter Egger chick and a bag of feed for a great price. Problem is we had no clue if the chicks were male or female. Turned out not to be a real problem. We had two males and 2 females. And we have learned a lot more about how to determine sex at a young age, not at a few days age, but a young age.
It all started with me wanting to get peacocks for my wife. So in the spring we went out and got a pair of India Blue Peacocks. The female was 1 year old and the male was 2 years old. They both needed another year of growth to be old enough to breed. But the thing we were concerned about was that they were new to this farm, and if we were to let them roam around the farm, they might wander off or get scared off, and not be able to come home. So we were careful with them, built a new cage and housed them in it.
Problem was we didn’t do good enough to keep the raccoons out. One night a raccoon dug under and got it and killed the hen. A few nights later we came home late from fishing and found the raccoon in the cage and the male was dead. Difference was that this time the raccoon didn’t leave the pen on her own. We lost both of the first peacocks we got to raccoons. So I started looking round for peacocks and one day I came across an ad for some babies. They were billed as day old peachicks, but I think they were a week or two old. This lady had gotten into raising peachicks thinking she was going to get rich or something and when it didn’t work, she wanted out. So I picked up all four chicks plus an Easter Egger chick and a bag of feed for a great price. Problem is we had no clue if the chicks were male or female. Turned out not to be a real problem. We had two males and 2 females. And we have learned a lot more about how to determine sex at a young age, not at a few days age, but a young age.