This going two year old, white peacock has been proudly strutting his stuff and calling. One of his hens, who is also two, laid her first egg today. He seems to be celebrating.



Last year, as a not quite one year old, he started dancing and strutting with none of the eye or guard feathers yet. It was funny. Next year on, his tail should look pretty good. I have 5 other males, who are older, who have really nice tails now. I have 8 hens. We just set 6 peafowl eggs under two broody, old, silkie hens.

Keith

Cool birds, when we moved to this house there was some semi feral peacocks in the area, there call really carries, lol. I have a friend that has some in a large coop area, I'm a mile away and can hear the males when the wind is right....

When I lived in town, I bought two few day old peachicks at a swap meet. The smaller died right away. The larger lived for a little over 9 years, until probably a coyote or fox killed him and ate his breast out. When he was old enough, I put him in my pigeon loft. He was super tame and would perch on my hand when young and arm, when he got large and eat millworms and cherry tomatoes from hand. He would come when called. In his second year, he started calling loudly in my backyard and I had to put him in my basement, until I found two barns and some land to rent in the country. I was slightly worried someone would walk by, here him calling and think I have a woman imprisoned in my basement. Peacocks sound sort of like a women yelling "Help!" when they cry.

Keith

Tough bogs to trap once they go wild
I captured 16 that escaped into the town of Sulton WA

There's lots of money in selling peafowl and mute swans. I wish I could trap a bunch to sell.

Here's the same bird when he first started displaying last year.



Keith

I have a friend that use to be into exotic birds.

He dealt in peacocks, swans and those pigeons that would be flying along and suddenly start flipping in mid air.

If he wasn't pulling my leg, he sold mating pairs of swans for 6-800 dollars and that was 25 years ago

Birmingham rollers and tumblers flip or roll in the air. I have sold and shipped many thousands of Birmingham rollers and a few hundred tumblers. The birds I exported the most are parlor rollers, which have an extreme form of the gene, which makes them roll on the ground. I bought out the World Champion, Sean Mueller and literally had the best parlor rollers in the world. Some would roll over 1700 feet on the ground.

Keith

Dang, never saw the ground rollers.

The ones flipping in the air were fun to watch

Mute Swans can go over $2000.00 now for a proven pair. The states and feds cull thousands of them. Back in the early 2000's or late 90's, when Maryland was getting ready to cull thousands of mute swans, a buddy of mine, drunkenly tried to convince me to drive us there overnight, so we could catch as many as we could and bring them back to sell in Ohio, in my Pontiac 6000.

Keith

lol,

This guy had the first fainting goats I ever saw too.

Not sure why, but he didn't try raising any of them, didn't have the couple he bought very long until he got rid of them.

There was a dog warden, who lived in Northwest, Ohio, who was also a pigeon guy and friends with a lot of my friends, who were also pigeon guys. We picked him up on the way to the Hartford City, Indiana Pigeon Show. On the way we stopped back at his place and he showed us around. He had close to 60, black and white, fainting goats. I asked to see one faint. He got his garden hose out and sprayed the entire herd. They stiffened up and fell over like he had sprayed them with bullets instead. There was so many that they started getting back up as he was finishing spraying the last ones. He ran the hose over them again, knocking them all down again. I wish I had a video of it.

Keith

Boy do we have Mute swans, hundreds of them, just close by here, thousands if you added them up....We never knew they were unprotected, then the state declared them protected after the DEC wanted to thin them out, huge outcry from the humaniacs....I used to catch them by hand when the came ashore, or if they tumbled out of the sky when they hit an overhead line.

My g.grandfather would catch them and eat them, lol, actually not bad, breast meat is like beef london broil....

That explains where you got the plumage for your hat!
“Yarrrrr!!!”

Had an elderly across the tracks neighbor that had one of the white ones. It liked to strut up and down the ridgeline of his house. I would hear it call and look over to see it across the tracks from my front yard. I guess some critter got it after the old guy passed.

the zoo I used to volunteer and Girlfriend(now wife) worked at at had several that roasted in the nice large old trees. I always enjoyed hearing and watching them in the early morning before everything was open. They really added to the scene rolling hills nice lake and great trees.

I was also allowed to fish said lake after hours on one bank And was the only person that had in decades.. Caught aone very nice bass.. Sure miffed the security gard.

Very nice

When I was young I rented a farm off of a guy. I had never been there until I went on the tractor and plowed it and was coming out about dark and had to come thru a road that was woods on both sides and limbs hanging over it and it was really dark in there. Unknown to me there was an old guy that lived near there and he had a peacock roosting in those trees and he let out a scream and like to have scared me to death, I had never seen nor heard one before and I was glad when I got out on the open road, lol.

The peacock call is added as a sound effect to a lot of movies, in locations peafowl don't exist. Ringneck dove calls are added a lot too.

Peacock feathers sell really well. You can make a couple of hundred dollars off of the shed feathers of a peacock a year, as long as you collect them as soon as possible after being shed. They have close to 200 tail feathers when mature. Longer, perfect eye feathers easily sell for $2.00 each. The guard feathers sell too.

Keith