...and there was only ONE...

Our peacocks have been one of the surprising joys that I have gotten to experience as a newby to this farming thing! When we inherited our first peacock and his two ladies (peahens), other than thinking that they were the most beautiful birds I had ever seen, I didn't know that they would officially become one of my favorite animals we have here at Irishman Acres.

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)

I just don't think we were meant to sell any peacocks....we hope that next year we have better luck....and it looks like I am going to have more than a few peacocks strutting around my yard next spring....we have to seperate the males during breeding season and we are running out of enclosures!! :)

 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