by Pa Rock
Farmer in Summer
Way back in the early summer of 2014, during my first year at The Roost, I learned of a family living near Willow Springs who had some baby peacocks for sale. Having had a prior experience raising peafowl, I drove out to her farm and wound up coming home with four chicks - so small that I was able to transport all of them in one cardboard box. They quickly settled into a combination indoor and outdoor nursery and pen that I had set up. The birds proved to be so easy to care for that before long I bought four more from another breeder.
As the birds got older it became apparent that six of them were females (peahens) and the other two were males (peacocks). They quickly began outgrowing the nursery complex, and my son and I built a large aviary connected to the old ramshackle barn that had been on the farm for generations. The new facility, like the nursery, allowed the birds to go in and out of the barn at will, while remaining safe from predators by being caged when they were outside.
During the intervening three years they had a natural increase of one (a peahen) when one of the hens managed to hatch one egg out of a nest of about a dozen eggs. There was also an artificial increase of one other through an abandoned egg that I managed to hatch in an incubator. The incubator baby, Cosmo, was killed by predators soon after being released outside. Two of the grown hens were also later killed by a predator who managed to get into their aviary on two separate evenings.
This spring the peahens laid many eggs, but refused to sit and try to hatch any of them. I ran about two dozen eggs or so through the incubator process, but none of those hatched. It was a year without an increase in the peafowl population at The Roost.
I had kept the peafowl captive for the past three years as a safety precaution. This year, however, I began to sense that they were unhappy being constrained, and I knew that they particularly did not like the geese parading up to the aviary and taunting them. Last Sunday I made a carefully considered decision and released the peafowl to go an explore the farm. They are territorial creatures, and I knew that after three years in this one location they might roam, but they would very likely head back to the aviary to roost when evening approached. Thankfully, that assumption proved to be right.
On Sunday as I released the five remaining peahens and two peacocks, all five geese rushed forward at the gate to assert their dominance. One goose grabbed a peahen by the top-not and shook her. That quick attack, however, was the only victory that the poor geese were destined to experience in the war with the peafowl.
One of the peacocks decided that he was tougher than the geese, and he proceeded to strut his stuff in open defiance of the goosetapo. Before the day was over he had completely taken charge of the five geese and was marching them around in a frenzied, but tight, formation. In fact, the angry peacock marched the five geese into the hen house two different times during the day, something that had to be humiliating to the geese who had up until then been the acknowledged masters of the yard. By the next night the peacock was helping me put the geese up in the hen house in the evening before he headed over to the aviary to retire for the night.
And now, nearly a week later, the barnyard dominance is clearly established and all of the routines have been set. The peafowl leave the aviary every morning when I let them out, and they work their way around the farm as a group dining on bugs and clover - with the exception of the one peacock who still acts as a drill sergeant for the geese.
Hup, two, three, four! Hup, two, three, four!
(To every thing there is a pecking order - turn, turn, turn!)
Farmer in Summer
Way back in the early summer of 2014, during my first year at The Roost, I learned of a family living near Willow Springs who had some baby peacocks for sale. Having had a prior experience raising peafowl, I drove out to her farm and wound up coming home with four chicks - so small that I was able to transport all of them in one cardboard box. They quickly settled into a combination indoor and outdoor nursery and pen that I had set up. The birds proved to be so easy to care for that before long I bought four more from another breeder.
As the birds got older it became apparent that six of them were females (peahens) and the other two were males (peacocks). They quickly began outgrowing the nursery complex, and my son and I built a large aviary connected to the old ramshackle barn that had been on the farm for generations. The new facility, like the nursery, allowed the birds to go in and out of the barn at will, while remaining safe from predators by being caged when they were outside.
During the intervening three years they had a natural increase of one (a peahen) when one of the hens managed to hatch one egg out of a nest of about a dozen eggs. There was also an artificial increase of one other through an abandoned egg that I managed to hatch in an incubator. The incubator baby, Cosmo, was killed by predators soon after being released outside. Two of the grown hens were also later killed by a predator who managed to get into their aviary on two separate evenings.
This spring the peahens laid many eggs, but refused to sit and try to hatch any of them. I ran about two dozen eggs or so through the incubator process, but none of those hatched. It was a year without an increase in the peafowl population at The Roost.
I had kept the peafowl captive for the past three years as a safety precaution. This year, however, I began to sense that they were unhappy being constrained, and I knew that they particularly did not like the geese parading up to the aviary and taunting them. Last Sunday I made a carefully considered decision and released the peafowl to go an explore the farm. They are territorial creatures, and I knew that after three years in this one location they might roam, but they would very likely head back to the aviary to roost when evening approached. Thankfully, that assumption proved to be right.
On Sunday as I released the five remaining peahens and two peacocks, all five geese rushed forward at the gate to assert their dominance. One goose grabbed a peahen by the top-not and shook her. That quick attack, however, was the only victory that the poor geese were destined to experience in the war with the peafowl.
One of the peacocks decided that he was tougher than the geese, and he proceeded to strut his stuff in open defiance of the goosetapo. Before the day was over he had completely taken charge of the five geese and was marching them around in a frenzied, but tight, formation. In fact, the angry peacock marched the five geese into the hen house two different times during the day, something that had to be humiliating to the geese who had up until then been the acknowledged masters of the yard. By the next night the peacock was helping me put the geese up in the hen house in the evening before he headed over to the aviary to retire for the night.
And now, nearly a week later, the barnyard dominance is clearly established and all of the routines have been set. The peafowl leave the aviary every morning when I let them out, and they work their way around the farm as a group dining on bugs and clover - with the exception of the one peacock who still acts as a drill sergeant for the geese.
Hup, two, three, four! Hup, two, three, four!
(To every thing there is a pecking order - turn, turn, turn!)
1 comment:
"Goosetapo"--now that's funny.
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