Paco- when he was "forced" to live with the chickens :) |
After living here for 2 years, our peahens began nesting and baby making....which might be due to the fact that we built them their own enclosure and coup, and removed them from the chickens' living quarters!
And last year they hatched 6 peachicks...which are now 5 peacocks and 1 peahen....not a good ratio when we were wanting to sell them. Customers want a pair of them, and we are not willing to give up the only female that has hatched here.
The peachicks last year-2011 |
The peachicks now-2012 |
Which comes to the reason of my post today......
All 3 of our peahens laid eggs in 4 different nests!? And we knew that the not- quite-one-year-old peahen was not laying fertilized eggs, but didn't know which ones they were. One peahen began sitting, and at that same time, we loaded all the other eggs into our incubator.
Sadly....none of the eggs in the nest hatched, the poor mama sat there for over 30 days....how pathetic is that?? We examined the eggs and found that some were not fertile, and some looked to have died a week before they were due to hatch.
And the 20 eggs in the incubator??
Our ONLY 2012 baby |
This is the ONLY guy (or girl) that hatched!!!!! He (or she) is so precious...and really confused, because his new bunk-mates are these little ones....(turkeys we rescued)
They will probably join the guineas that roost in our barn at night....shhhhh....don't tell the coyotes and owls where they are!
~Kim
4 comments:
Oh Kim, how sweet is that little one!! And so sad that none of the others hatched.... life is hard, isn't it?? I still think I would like a peacock or two strutting around our farm....they are so perfectly lovely. Hmmmmmm......
Have a great day!!
Bev
I've tried raising peachicks, to no avail. Years ago as a farm reporter, I did a story on peacocks and have wanted some since. I did buy an adult male, had no idea they could fly so far and fast with a full tail.
Yep! Do you still have him...or did he fly the coup?
Come for a visit, Bev...we have a few waiting for ya!:)
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