Peababies and random thoughts

We had five more chicks hatch out a few days ago. A blackshoulder, three blues and a little mystery guy who I think is a white eyed (the lighter one stepping in its food dish). Slightly less exciting when I consider the 10 eggs in the incubator due to hatch that didn't. When dad checked them to see if any more were hatching, he said at least six of the weren't fertile. Usually our first batch or two of eggs have pretty awful fertility, but it goes up as the season progresses. This year we only had one or two infertile eggs in the beginning but seem to be having a bout of it now. Frustrating, but that's how these things go. The weather has been crazy, and that could certainly be the cause. It's less heartbreaking than having 10 dead in shell chicks, which we've had in previous years. But realistically, if we hatched every egg I collected we'd have peacocks coming out of our ears, and I'm always complaining the hens aren't laying as much as they're supposed to. I have to work on that perspective thing sometimes. But I just hate when eggs don't hatch!

Speaking of excess peas, I have been selling some of my yearlings and two year olds lately. Someone's coming tomorrow morning to take 5, so that'll put a dent in the 35+ I still have left. Now that there's the potential to have pen space to keep a few youngins, I've been studying the flock to see who I'd want to keep. There's a pretty spalding two year old boy with a nice white throat patch, some white wing feathers and tiny white specks in the scattered scraggly eyes he's developed. Not a glorious white eyed like some I've seen pictures of, but I'd like to keep him and see what his full train looks like. Plus, it gives me an excuse to keep a couple yearling spalding hens. These gals are gorgeous. I just love their brown chests and green necks. Hopefully I can find one or two with a few white feathers and maybe they'll throw something fun by the end of next summer. There's also a yearling white eyed male who I want to keep. This boy is really going to be white eyed, I think. He's already got completely white eye feathers coming out of his tail, and he's only a yearling. I think I remember him when he was a chick, and I think he looked like the little light chick who just hatched, so that gives me more evidence that's what he is (besides being the only thing that makes sense genetically). But I'll have to buy a hen for him. None of my hens seem obviously white eyed.

One major gripe--after waiting years for emerald chicks (got Beo, my male at an animal sale about four years ago but didn't find him a girl until last January, and didn't get them separated until Father's Day) my emerald hen seems to have developed a taste for her own eggs! We've had a problem in the main aviary with hens laying eggs off roosts, but the roosts are really high and we realized there were mice in the straw scaring the hens away from where they were supposed to be nesting. But in the new pens where the emeralds are the roost is only three feet off the ground and there's plenty of rodent free places for the hens to lay. My silver pieds started laying the day they were moved and have still be giving me eggs almost regularly since, all laid in the dirt in a corner of the pen. The emerald and purple hens had not been laying. Three nights ago my dad found pieces of egg shell under the emerald roost. Last night I went out to collect eggs and saw one as soon as I approached the pen, but it didn't look right. And it wasn't--the duller end of the egg was completed gone and there was still a little yoke in the shell. It didn't look like she laid this one off the roost, it looked like she picked at it and ate it! Boy was I angry. Tomorrow will be the moment of truth to see if she does it again. This will probably be her last clutch of the year, and I really would love a few emerald chicks. Beo's half emerald, half blue babies from the last two years have been so cute, I'd love some with more spalding in them.
Oh well.

This has to be something peafowl developed in captivity. You're never going to propagate your species if you eat your own potential offspring. Geez!