Here's pictures of 3 years of tail development of one of our peafowl.






Keith

Pretty birds but gosh are they noisy....

Kinda like women. You have to do a bunch of figuring to see if all the noise is worth being able to look at them.

Lol

Magnificent!!!

Thank you, Smash. I thought my comment was magnificent too.

I meant the white turkey Sam…..

Lol. I know, Smash. I'm just fooling around. Drinking beer and feeling good. It is certainly a pretty peacock.

I’m having my beer now too watching Jeremiah Johnson for the umteenth time. Hubby fast asleep woke up a bit after 3 am. Poor fella. Ready for snuggles n sleep myself

…. Gayest lookin chicken I ever seen

More developed than the last time you posted him. Looking good geting all grown up

I have 4 peacocks that are 4 or 5 years old and they have 30" plus longer tails then he does. They are probably at peak length. They have a lot of Green Peafowl genetics, which makes them longer and taller than pure Blues. They are well over 8' total length approaching 9'. Pure Greens can reach 9' 10" in total length.

Keith

Well, post the pretty ones. Not that plain jane whitey, LOL

He likes displaying for Diane. She took all 3 pictures. She likes him because he started dancing for her when he was only around 4 months old. I'll get some current pictures of the big ones.

Keith

Once saw a wild tom turkey display himself before a pea hen. The male peacock was up on a shelter roof and did not challenge the tom turkey.

Cracker

Smart move. I suspect the tom would have tore a peacock up.

Are the peas a commercial business? Just for show? Do the hens lay edible eggs?

I make money on the peafowl, but not a lot. The males each have roughly 200 feathers in their trains. Around 150 to 170 eye spot feathers and a combination of 30 of the T guard feathers and plume feathers. I sell those feathers mostly for $1.00 to $2.00 each. There's usually a few that can't be sold that get badly damaged or soiled, but the vast majority are sellable. I sell day old chicks for $60.00 each and probably should raise my prices, because I quickly sell out. Peafowl eggs often incubate poorly. Setting hens work better. Last year all the peafowl eggs that hatched for me, but 1, were hatched by silkie chicken hens. They incubate better some years than others. The most chicks I ever hatched in a year was 43.

We both like watching the peacocks. I like the cry they make, even though it vaguely sounds like a woman yelling for help. The put the peacock sound effect in lots of movies and TV shows in woods where there should not be any peacocks.

The eggs are perfectly edible. Except for a few species in New Guinea, all bird eggs are edible. Peacock is supposed to be good to eat. One Mexican customer of mine raised peafowl mostly just to eat. He preferred peafowl over chicken, but said it was similar.

In the Middle Ages in Europe, cooks would carefully skin a peacock, cook it and put the skin back on. Knights would then take an oath to perform some task on the peacock by placing their hand on it, reciting a pledge, pulling a feather out to wear and eating some meat.

Keith

Keith I also like the sound they make and enjoy watching them. I believe its probably found childhood memories of them at the zoo in Evansville . I went there a lot as a kid and later spent a lot of time as a docent( volunteer) that had gate axcess and would take animals to events and schools and give educational talks. Things like predator prey. Talks geared for the age group. I would thak thing like a kestrel, alligator, snakes, ect. Alond with animal parts for example owl and crow wings. Great to sho the difference in noise between the two moving through the air. The zoo made money offering the programs and it helped the under funded zoo and was fun to do. I love doing outdoor education.

My buddy had two: Earl and Marge. Earl was stunning but he drowned in the swimming pool…

That is a spectacular bird in the last pic. Are the white ones a specific breed, or just an aberration?

It's the same peacock in all 3 pictures taken over parts of 3 different years. He's probably 4 months old in the first picture. He will be 3 years old this Summer. He will get more spectacular over the next two years. Outside, in full sunlight, peafowl look much better.

There's around 200 different apparent colors in peafowl, counting base colors, patterning genes and pied. There's two main species of peacocks commonly kept, India Blues and Greens. Blues are more cold hardy. They readily hybridize and most of mine are crossed. I can get around 60 different apparent colors out of the peafowl I have. A lot of apparent colors take several different genes to makes. Whites are pretty common. Most are totally pied, rather than albino.

Keith